Risk Assessment
by SharkAria
Summary: Sansa's car is stolen. Sandor is her claims adjuster in shining armor (or, in this case, a polyester-blend wrinkle-free collared shirt and a cheap black tie). A mostly fluffy SanSan modern AU. Warning for language and non-explicit adult content.
1. Chapter 1

Risk Assessment

by SharkAria

A/N: This idea came to me and I was laughing about it in my head while I was driving home, and then I started taking it seriously in my head and before I knew it this was all out on the page and I thought, what the hell, maybe there are other SanSan fans who think it would be funny to see Sandor in a daily grind kind of job. Was gonna be a one-shot but I think now it will be more like 2-3 chapters.

* * *

oOo

Sansa sat primly on one of two green upholstered office chairs across the desk from the man who had been assigned to be her insurance agent. He was a bearded, sneering man in a shiny grey suit who clearly believed that his job duties included shaming his customers. His name and position were neatly embossed in black on a white placard that proclaimed proudly that he was "Janos Slynt, Sr Acct Exec, Kingsguard Auto Insurance". As far as Sansa could tell, the title did not confer any manners upon the bearer. Sansa tried to keep her expression pleasantly neutral, although her patience was certainly wearing thin.

Mr. Slynt gave her a long look down his nose. "Frankly, lady, your paperwork is a total mess. We can't reimburse you for the full value of your stolen car without a lot more documentation than what you brought here. Can't risk this being a case of fraudulent activity."

Sansa remained silent but thought, /How dare he accuse me of being a thief. I've been a loyal customer with Kingsguard since the day I got my license./

Mr. Slynt smirked and ran his index finger along a shiny incisor, then leaned forward and pointed to her open folder, the saliva on his fingertip leaving a dense wet mark on the top page. "You're going to need a copy of your most recent premium payment, verification from your employer that you're allowed to park in that lot, a bank statement -"

Sansa sighed and carefully kept the disgust from registering on her visage as she interrupted with as much grace as she could muster. "But you see, sir, I'm here now, taking time off work to address this issue, and since my car was stolen - well, you can imagine that it is not very convenient for me to come all the way down here -"

"Well, maybe you should have paid more attention to what I was saying you needed when we spoke on the phone. Now you're going to have to pay quite a few fees and fill out a bunch of forms just to start the reimbursement process."

Sansa tightly laced her fingers together in her lap, her knuckles whitening from the pressure. She couldn't afford to ask for another day off to deal with this mess, and she had followed Mr. Slynt's directions precisely. It was unfair that he should expect her to come back when she was his customer and the mistake had clearly been his, not hers. Assertiveness did not come to her naturally, but she simply could not leave without a check to replace her lost car. Why else had she been paying premiums all these years?

She cleared her throat and responded, "I hate to point out a shortcoming when you've already provided me so much help -" even as Sansa said it, she knew it came out sounding as much like the lie it was, "but you failed to mention that I needed to collect all those additional documents -"

A white haired man popped his head over the top of the cubicle. "Slynt, stop wasting time and send her over to the Hound." The man nodded to Sansa. "He's not much better mannered than this one here, young lady, but he'll fix you up just fine. You'll have a new car in no time." The man glared at the back of Mr. Slynt's head expecting a response.

Mr. Slynt rolled his eyes and grunted without looking at the older man. "Sure, Selmy, anything you say." Satisfied, Mr. Selmy disappeared behind the barrier. Sansa's eyes lit up. Finally, she was getting somewhere.

Mr. Slynt shoved Sansa's papers back across the desk toward her, and the top several sheets fluttered to the floor. He snickered and did not move to help her.

Sansa pursed her lips and crouched down to collect her papers with as much dignity as she could muster. Mr. Slynt leered as she bent over, her bare legs pale under the fluorescent lights. She blushed and looked down at her papers, although she felt that she should be able to wear a nice pair of shorts in the summer without having to feel men's eyes all over her. At least her flowy, modest top precluded him from staring down the front of her shirt. She stood up and met his eyes again.

"Ask for Sandor Clegane in the special claims division." Mr. Slynt scribbled a few words and numbers across a form handed the piece of paper to her. "You'll find him on the seventh floor in Cube Row G-3."

Sansa tucked the form into her folder, then nodded and turned to leave. This Clegane person had to be more helpful than Mr. Slynt had been. "Thank you for your assistance," Sansa said to Mr. Slynt, not meaning a word.

"Oh, and Miss Stark," Mr. Slynt muttered slickly, "we call him the Hound because he can sniff out insurance fraud a mile away. So don't get any ideas."

"Not everyone's a cheat like you, Slynt," Mr. Selmy's voice barked from behind the cubicle wall. Not wishing to engage either of them any further, Sansa turned on her heel and hurried to the elevators.

* * *

oOo

The seventh floor was a replica of the one that Sansa had just left; past the elevator bank and a small receptionist area, blocks of cubicles were smashed together like inner city blocks or tetris pieces or jail cells or any number of other comparisons that Sansa could have made, were she not more interested in taking care of her business and getting out of there. The low voices of dozens of workers taking phone calls were muted by the sound-deadening carpet and ceiling tiles that were matching shades of neutral green-grey.

She shuddered at the idea of toiling all day long under the cold unnatural lights, staring at a computer and willing the hours to fly toward 5 PM, willing the years to fly toward vestment in a pension plan. As rude as Mr. Slynt had been, she could understand how years of work in this soul sucking building could have embittered him. Resolving to try to think more kindly of the insurance company employees, Sansa walked toward the row of workspaces that Mr. Slynt had indicated. A laminated card was hung up on the outer wall of the cube she was looking for, confirming that she had found "Sandor Clegane, Claims Adjuster - Special Projects".

Sansa thought it might be impolite to just barge in, so she lightly rapped her knuckles against the cheap workspace divider, causing the cube-farm walls to shake. In a soft voice, she entreated, "Excuse me sir, Mr. Slynt said you could help me . . .?"

She was answered with a noncommittal grunt. Sansa poked her head in. There, hunched over a standard issue desktop PC on an ergonomically-correct office chair in the tiny grey cell was the broad back of the largest man that Sansa had ever seen. His long, disheveled dark hair slid over the collar of his cheap-looking white polyester shirt and along his massive shoulders. He pounded the keyboard with a level of aggression that seemed more suited to a bar brawl than to email composition.

The man whipped around in his office chair. "I told that snivelly little - " He rasped, his voice dripping with exasperation. His brow was furrowed, his heavy jaw was set in clenched teeth, but it was the disfiguring scars across half of his face that made Sansa step back in shock before she could compose herself.

The man narrowed his eyes at her reaction. "So you're the new associate Slynt hired, are you?" He gave her a cursory once-over, though his eyes lingered for a moment on her legs. "Those shorts are a little casual for office work, don't you think?"

Sansa felt her face get hot and she held the paperwork stiffly across her legs, hoping that the folder covered her thighs a little. She swallowed, unsure of how to respond. "Um -" she stuttered, unable to tear her eyes away from the unexpected, gruesome spectacle of the man's face in order to explain that he had misinterpreted her purpose for being in his cubicle.

The man chuckled, the burned side of his mouth twisted into a cruel smirk. "Go ahead, take a good long look. My face isn't pretty like yours is, but I can teach you how to use an actuarial table better than one of those preening brats downstairs in the sales office."

She forced herself to stop staring at the man's terrible scars and look down at his skinny black necktie, which appeared downright waif-like against the solid wall of his chest. The tip was far too high, many inches above his belt buckle; with a thick neck like that he probably had a hard time finding the right size of neckwear. Her eyes flicked across his massive hairy forearms that were exposed where he had rolled up his sleeves. He was so big that he seemed to take up the entire space. She looked down at her hands, the only part of her view that none of his body was in. "I - I think there's been some mistake -" she choked out and let her eyes rest on his pawlike hands. It seemed like the most neutral part of him to look at.

He leaned back, his chair squealing in protest. He crossed his arms over his chest and muttered, "Look girl, those fawning salesmen will flirt with you and stare at those long legs of yours when they think you aren't looking, but they won't teach you how to protect one of our customers from insurance fraud. The last little airhead lost her job because she didn't listen to me. So if you don't want that to happen, you'll do your training with me for a couple hours like Slynt told you to, and then you'll never have to gaze upon my ugly face again."

Now Sansa was starting to get exasperated in addition to feeling uncomfortable. She just wanted to get her claim resolved and this man was completely misunderstanding everything. And she couldn't help but feel a little sad that he kept referring to his fearsome visage. Her ears got hot as she felt ashamed for having been unable to keep the shock off her face when she saw his scars.

She gathered up her courage and stepped fully into his cubicle, looking right into his grey eyes. "No - I mean - I'm not an employee. I'm a customer. My car got stolen and Mr. Slynt said I didn't have the right paperwork, so -" here the man rolled his eyes and nearly derailed Sansa's train of thought, though she could not tell whether he was directing his insouciance at her or at his coworker - "so I hope you can help me, Mr. Clegane," she finished. She held out her papers like a peace offering.

He snatched the folder from her hand and snapped it open. "No need for 'Mr. Clegane.' Sandor will do." He flipped through the pages and spun around to his computer, bringing up a few windows on his monitor, then whipped back around to face her. "Take a seat, girl. This will take a bit of work, whether you want to wait with the likes of me or not." He made a curt nod with his chin toward a grungy vinyl chair on the other side of his desk, then pulled a pen out of a drawer and started marking up her forms.

At that, she felt like she had to say something. "I don't mind waiting with you at all, especially if you can get my claim resolved, Mr. - Sandor." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear nervously. Sandor raised an eyebrow, but said nothing in return.

Sansa perched daintily on the edge of the seat he had offered, smoothing the front of her shorts demurely. She looked past Sandor's shoulder, at what she could see of the rest of his cubicle - anything to avoid staring impolitely at his face and making him feel even more self-conscious. Several spreadsheets had been printed out and pinned to the padded walls. A sharp letter opener rested next to his computer mouse, glinting under the task light. Everything in his workspace was conspicuously utilitarian; there was not one personal effect to be seen.

She turned her attention again to Sandor as he spun back to the computer and clicked his mouse a few times. The printer next to his monitor sprung to life.

"Well, girl, you left out a few pieces of paperwork, but nothing essential. It's not the disaster that Slynt made it out to be. You'll get a check in the mail day after tomorrow and you'll be out terrorizing the streets in whatever precious little car you purchase by the end of the week."

"Oh, thank you!" she breathed, a grin spreading across her face.

He gave her an odd look that might have had the hint of a genuine smile, then pulled the curling sheets out of the printer tray and passed them across the desk to her. "Sign here," he indicated where with a thick finger, "and here," and handed her a pen.

Sansa breathed a sigh of relief. /Mr. Selmy was right. He's not very refined, but he did help me./ She took the pen from his hand, her smooth fingertips brushing against his rough skin, and neatly signed her name where he had pointed.

"A proper little lady, you are," he said quietly, and Sansa couldn't tell if he was teasing or unkindly mocking her. "The Queen herself doesn't sign her name so perfectly." Sandor folded the papers and put them in an envelope, which he tossed in a bin at the edge of his desk labeled "outbox". Abruptly he stood up, practically blocking out the light.

"Is - is that all?" Sansa asked, surprised both by his quick work and his height.

"It is until the next time somebody steals your car." He picked up her folder off his desk and handed it back to her. "But I recommend installing an alarm system on your next ride so that you don't have to deal with me again."

His self-deprecating comments were so painful to hear, especially since he had taken care of her problem so efficiently. "It was my pleasure to deal with you," she countered. "I truly appreciate your help, Sandor. If I have another problem with my insurance you'll be the first person I call." She thrust her hand forward in a gesture of goodwill.

Sandor looked down at her hand awkwardly, as though he didn't know what to do with it. Sansa's face fell and her ears started to get hot again. But just as she was about to turn away, he engulfed her delicate hand in his huge one and gave it a gentle shake.

"And it would be my pleasure to help you again," he rasped. The expression on his face looked as though his own words surprised him.


	2. Chapter 2

Risk Assessment - Chapter 2

By SharkAria

A/N: WOW. I have never received such a swift and positive response from a fandom! Thank you to everyone who commented and kudos'd Chapter 1, and for taking a chance on a pretty unconventional (or perhaps overly conventional) AU. This is my first posted piece for SanSan and I wasn't sure what to expect. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story.

Warnings: Lots of language this chapter. Also, this is a little bit darker than the previous chapter [brief discussion of Sandor's backstory ... no, not the scars]. But then it gets lighter and fluffier again as the rest of this fic was intended to be.

The Keep's bartender cracked open the beer and slid it across the battered wooden counter to Sandor. Sandor tossed a couple coins down as a tip and took a much-needed swig straight from the bottle. A bit of the liquid trickled out from the burned corner of his lips where the flesh never quite met up, and he wiped it off with his meaty forearm. / _So uncouth,/_ the old memory of Cersei's high voice rang through his head. / _As if he weren't hideous to look at, he has no manners. Certainly he saves the company money, but he shouldn't interact with our clients, Joffrey./_

 _/He's useful,/_ Joffrey had responded _. /The customers are afraid to complain about their rising premiums when he's around./_ And then Joffrey had snickered and insisted that Sandor take another shot with him. The three of them had been standing together at the last holiday party before the famous mother and son financial duo had been indicted for embezzlement of investor funds.

But that was many years ago; Cersei was long dead by her own hand - she had taken a handful of pills rather than let the feds make an example of her in court - and Joffrey, the worthless shit stain who had inherited his executive position at Baratheon Lannister LLP, would be locked up in a white collar prison until his blonde hair turned silver.

Sandor had been subpoenaed and the attorneys had taken a couple depositions, but ultimately the court had found that he hadn't been involved in the scandal. It wasn't entirely true, but Sandor wasn't about to admit to wrongdoing if it meant sharing a cell with Joffrey for the rest of his life. He'd escaped with his honor intact and had gone off to work at Kingsguard, where most of his coworkers were afraid of him and where they usually let him just wrestle with his spreadsheets without bothering him. The main reason he had moved over to claims adjusting was because he rarely had to interact with customers face-to-face, and so that skinny shit-eating buggers like Joffrey couldn't use the way he looked against his own clients.

 _/It's the only thing that face of yours is good for,/_ Cersei laughed, haughty and cruel.

 _/Shut up, you dead old cunt_ ,/ Sandor mentally responded to Cersei's ghost as he never would have spoken to her when she was alive. He took another drink, and this time, when the beer dripped from the corner of his mouth and he wiped it on his sleeve, Cersei stayed silent.

He gazed around the darkened bar. Technically it was still Happy Hour, but the few patrons in the long, narrow room all looked pretty somber to him. It was mercifully quiet, just the way he liked it. The Keep was wedged between a nail salon and a liquor store in a shitty old strip mall that had never seen better days. It was a classic hole-in-the-wall, open from 6 AM to 2 AM seven days a week, for all the truly dedicated alcoholics in the neighborhood, and no matter what time of day the lights were always kept low enough so that the occasional first-time patron usually didn't notice Sandor's disfiguring burns. Better yet, it was close to his home, so when he got too drunk he could just leave the Bronco in the lot and stumble to his building. He used to do that a lot more often, back when he had first started working at Kingsguard and when he had to work harder to silence Cersei and Joffrey and the voice of that _other_ person who had made so many years of his life miserable. Nowadays, Sandor mostly just liked to stop here at the end of the work week because the bartender let him hunch over a barstool and nurse his drink alone without trying to interrupt his thoughts with stupid fucking smalltalk.

This week had been a little bit different for Sandor, though. His mind drifted back, once again, to Sansa Stark, that stuttering, chirping girl who had come in to the office on Monday. / _Oh, thank you!/_ she had peeped when he had assured her that her insurance would cover the loss. She'd looked at him like a knight in shining fucking armor in that moment, as if he'd done something other than his goddamn job. He wondered if she had picked out a new car yet, and whether it was blue like her eyes or red like her hair. Whatever the color, Sandor was certain that she had bought something unbearably cute and gutless, and it would probably get stolen right out from under her straight little nose just like the last one. Then she would fly right back into his cubicle, perch on his ugly old chair like the pretty bird that she was and ask him to convince the company to shell out another couple grand to cover her carelessness.

Actually, that wouldn't be a tragedy. Those flushed cheeks and pink lips of hers had crossed his mind more than a few times when he'd stared across his desk at the empty chair where she'd sat. And he'd have been lying to himself if he didn't admit that he'd been surprised by her offer of a handshake at the conclusion of their business. Her palm had been a little sweaty when he'd taken it in his own, and he'd held it a moment longer than he'd meant to. Then she smiled at him, and he'd dropped her hand like a hot poker and shuffled back to his desk without bidding her goodbye. Maybe it had been mean, but what the fuck was he / _supposed/_ to do? It wasn't like pretty girls touched / _him/_ all the time.

He took a long pull on his beer bottle and clunked it down on the counter. Maybe he'd find a way to steal her new car himself. Might be worth it to see those long pale legs across from him one more time. They would make a nice mental image for him on those nights when he couldn't sleep, when lifting weights until his arms felt like they would fall off his shoulders or drinking until his head swam wasn't enough to block out Cersei and Joffrey's voices, or the old burning pain on his face.

The door to the parking lot swung open and the orange afternoon sunlight poured into The Keep. Sandor blinked as his eyes adjusted and heard a certain shrill laughter that he recognized as the unique sound of several buzzed twentysomethings who mistakenly believed they were doing something daringly ironic. He'd certainly heard the sound enough times from the ambitious young people trying to gain favor with Joffrey. Sandor groaned and hoped that the intruders would realize that The Keep wasn't the kind of place to serve sugary cocktails. Instead, they commandeered a booth against the wall. Sandor narrowed his eyes and stared morosely down at his drink, wondering if should just knock it back and get the hell out of here before they completely killed his buzz.

He could tell that one of the girls was approaching by the click of her heels against the tile floor. He decided to stick around long enough to find out whether she would order something revolting with flavored vodka, or something revolting with schnapps.

"Sandor?" a familiar voice said beside him, and he felt a light hand on his shoulder.

It couldn't be. What would a girl like / _her/_ be doing in a place like / _this/_? He steeled himself for disappointment, but when he turned toward her, he saw that it was Sansa after all. Her hair flowed loose over her bare arms and a tight little blue top that skimmed her midriff, but her legs were covered by a pair of fitted jeans. She seemed more relaxed than she had been in his office earlier that week. So this wasn't the first place she and her friends had been drinking this afternoon.

"Been coming to this place for a while and I've never seen you here, girl," Sandor muttered, his casual tone belying his quickening pulse. He jerked his chin toward the bartender, who lumbered over to take Sansa's order.

To Sandor's surprise, Sansa slid gracefully onto the barstool beside him. Her shoulder brushed against his and he tensed up. "It's my first time here. My friends thought it would be fun to try a dive bar," she explained.

 _/A dive bar, huh? Us regulars just call it_ a bar./ Sandor finished off his drink and slammed the bottle down on the counter. / _Fucking gentrification's ruining this neighborhood./_ But he held his tongue, which was not something he usually did. What was this girl doing to him?

Sansa ordered a light beer from the bartender, then gestured to Sandor's empty bottle. "And I'd like to get him another one of those."

 _/What the . . .?/_ A girl had never ordered Sandor a drink before. When the bartender plunked the refreshments in front of them, Sandor just stared at the full bottles like he'd never seen such a wondrous sight.

His shock must have been evident on his face, because Sansa explained as she slid onto the stool next to him, "We're sort of celebrating because of you, actually. I bought my new car today, so the least I could do is buy you a drink."

She turned toward the posse of well groomed boys and girls in the booth and waved. They all held their glasses up in salute, and a curly haired youth toasted, "To Sansa's big insurance dude!" The girls giggled and clinked their glasses together. Sandor glared at the brats, but they were all too far away to be intimidated by his angry expression, much less his frightening face. Not one of Sansa's friends looked like they could hold their liquor.

Sandor took a careful sip of his drink and growled, "I hope you didn't drive your new car over here. Every last one of you looks like you'll be praying to the porcelain god come tomorrow."

"Well, Margaery was sober when we got here . . ." Sansa trailed off as a peal of giggles erupted from the booth, "but I think we'll all be walking back home. I would rather not crash the new ride you got for me."

"Leaving your new car in a slummy parking lot, now? Isn't that how you got into this mess in the first place?"

Sansa turned away and blushed prettily. Something about the curve of her neck in combination with the booze in Sandor's belly made him feel uncomfortably warm. Self consciously, he tugged at the knot of his tie and popped open the top button of his collar.

Sansa lapsed into silence and took a sip of her beer. She looked over at her friends. / _The fun's over. She thanked me with a cheap drink, and now she's trying to think of a way to get herself out of this conversation./_ Sandor clenched his teeth and waited for her inevitable awkward farewell.

Instead, she turned toward him and looked straight at his face, as if she couldn't even see his scars - or, even more strangely, as if she had already seen them and no longer found them remarkable. Maybe that was from the amount of alcohol she had drunk. In spite of the darkness of the bar her blue eyes still seemed to shine. And maybe that was from the amount of alcohol / _he/_ had drunk. She put her hand on his shoulder again and shook him gently.

"I said, do you want to see it?"

Sandor's eyes flicked over to her hand on his shoulder, confused. It was the third time she had touched him. He looked glanced down to her soft pink lips, then back up to her eyes. "See what now?" he asked, nonplussed.

"My car, Sandor," she smiled shyly. "It's in the lot now, even if we can't drive it anywhere."

 _/If only we could_ ,/ he thought through the haze of drunkenness before he could stop himself. / _I could think of a few places I'd like to take you for a ride./_ Instead, he replied, "Sure. Let's see what kind of tin can I bought for you."

A/N: The image of Sandor hunched in his cubicle in Ch 1 should be credited to /The Incredibles/.


	3. Chapter 3

Risk Assessment - Ch 3

by SharkAria

The poison green Mustang, fresh off the dealership lot, sparkled sinfully in the late afternoon sunlight. It would have been an understatement to say that Sansa's new car was not what Sandor had been expecting.

"They cut you one hell of an insurance check, girl," he chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief. He knew that they were going to. Like the horny fool that he was, he'd approved Sansa's claim for the maximum dollar amount recoverable. Sandor was the only employee in his department who had clearance to do so without a supervisor's signature; he was given special leeway to use his judgement because he was known to be brutally impartial in assessing claims. Apparently a pair of doleful blue eyes was all it took for him to risk his reputation for unforgiving honesty. Not that he was about to tell Sansa any of that. It didn't matter anyway, since she - or a savvy salesperson at the Ford lot - had clearly figured out that she'd gotten substantially more from the insurance company than her stolen car was worth.

"It's a bit flashy." Sansa hedged.

Sandor raised his one good eyebrow at the comment. He was no gearhead, but even he could tell that the car had a monster trapped underneath its shiny hood. "A bit," he deadpanned.

A corner of Sansa's perfect cupid bow lips curved upward at Sandor's expression. "Do you like it?" Her voice lilted with an annoying approval-seeking uptick that he heard on the tongues of so many girls her age. But it had never been directed toward him before, which made her question all the more disconcerting to Sandor.

 _Girl, you could be sitting behind the wheel of a forklift and you'd make it look like a Ferarri. Why do you care what I think?_ Instead, he simply muttered, "It suits you."

Sansa's brow furrowed, as if she wasn't sure if he'd paid her a compliment or not. Sandor had been aiming for something neutral enough to conceal that he was more interested in paying attention to Sansa than to what she was driving. She bit her lip thoughtfully, and Sandor became abruptly and uncomfortably aware of his ungainly, hulking mass towering over her petite form. Now he knew what his rusty old Bronco felt like parked next to her fast new coupe.

Sansa ran a fingertip along the gleaming door panel. "It just looked so - so fun." She seemed like she wanted to feel proud of herself but couldn't quite get past the guilt of acquiring something just for her own pleasure.

What the hell. It cost him nothing to give her a little validation. And maybe, just maybe, she was still drunk enough to feel some gratitude back in his direction. A marginally positive comment had to be worth at least another smile, right? Sandor put his own heavy hand on the hood. "Aye. You could have a lot of fun in thing." His voice came out huskier than he had intended, but he got the smile he was seeking.

"You know, you're right. This is going to be great. And different!" Sansa declared happily as she clicked her pink nails against the windshield and glanced into the car's interior. Sandor's eyes flicked down to the delicate gold pendant resting against the smooth skin of her clavicle, then a little lower, but he blinked and returned his gaze to her face before what he was doing became too obvious. He was pretty sure she didn't notice him staring, but the lingering warmth of that third beer made it harder to judge that kind of thing.

Sansa looked up at him again and bit her lip again in the same uncertain way she had been appraising the Mustang. Sandor felt her gaze skate across his scars, and it was only from years of practice that he resisted reaching up to smooth his long hair over the ruined half of his face. He was a little surprised to realize that he was holding his breath, unsure of just what it was that he was waiting for.

Then Sansa shifted her weight onto one foot, looked down, and wrapped a lock of hair around her knuckles. Her cheeks reddened and she swallowed. "I should get back to my friends," she said quietly, twisting the ringlet into a knot.

Suddenly the pleasantly unfamiliar conversation shifted over to a script that Sandor recognized bitterly. After all these years, he was used to rejection - expected it, in fact - but her words stung more than he had anticipated. Capturing the interest of Sansa, a girl with youth and beauty and friends, was so far out of the realm of possibility for Sandor that it hadn't even occurred to him to put a move on her. And yet here she was, turning him away, the same as if he'd actually had the balls to make a pass. He clenched his fists at his sides, curled his toes inside his oversized Oxfords.

 _Did you think she was going to throw herself into your freakish arms?_ Cersei's spiteful voice oozed through his mind before he could tamp down her unwelcome commentary. _You said it yourself, you were only doing your job to help her._

 _Enough of this farce,_ Sandor thought. He jabbed his hand into his pocket and fished his keys out. It wasn't as if he had expected anything else, but clearly Cersei's ghost was the only woman he'd be taking home with him tonight. The miserable thought killed whatever buzz he had left.

Without glancing back at Sansa, he sidestepped the new Mustang and reached in through the open window of his Bronco to unlock the door. He was halfway in the driver's seat when he heard the girl's voice again.

"Hold on - wait!" she chirped.

He crammed the key into the ignition and twisted hard. The Bronco rumbled to life, its dash glowing red like the eyes of a demon.

"Go on, girl," he sneered, yanking the car door shut. Through the open window he made a dismissive gesture and muttered, "You got the car you wanted. I got a drink. We're even."

"But -" she protested, then took a deep breath as if she needed to gather up her courage. "A bottle of beer is poor thanks for all this. Can't we - can't I at least buy you -" she seemed to be grasping for an idea, " a whole pitcher of beer sometime?"

 _What is she playing at?_ The thought sprang unbidden to his mind, and he wasn't sure if it was his own or Cersei's. Sandor narrowed his eyes at her, as if he might be able to glimpse her motivation.

But then the last ray of sun caught Sansa's face, and her hair glowed like molten gold, and for a moment Sandor imagined that her blue eyes reflected his own anguish of rejection, and then words were spouting from his traitorous mouth before either he or Cersei could bite them back. "I come here every Friday after work. Stop by next week to prove you haven't totaled that green beast of yours."

Sansa's lips pressed together as she tried to determine whether he was joking or just being mean to her. But he couldn't bear to stick around for a second longer to see what she decided. Without taking a look back at her, Sandor slammed the stick into gear and peeled out of the lot with a wicked squeal of tires. As he pulled onto the street, he cranked the stereo to max volume and let the power chords thrum through his veins.

* * *

Sansa felt so powerful in her Mustang that she was almost embarrassed by how true the cliche had turned out to be. She loved the way that heads turned when she pulled up to a stoplight, loved pressing her dainty foot to the gas pedal and streaking away in a bolt of green.

It was the only time she felt that way. At work all the senior ladies bossed her around because they could, and at home her roommates left dirty dishes in the sink and played video games late into the night because she never dared confront them about their discourteousness. But when she got behind that wheel, she became dangerous, a beauty at the reins of her fast emerald horse.

And she owed it all to Sandor. If he hadn't helped her, she'd still be gathering paperwork for that smirking, leering Slynt and taking the bus to work.

After she had left Sandor's office, she had planned to send him a warm thank you note for his efficient, if not especially charming assistance. His gruffness had given her the impression that he did not often receive expressions of appreciation from either his customers or his employer, and for some reason this made her feel strangely melancholy. Between his tremendous size and his mangled face, people were probably too scared to say much of anything to him. Even she had felt that way at first. Well, if Sansa's graceful and kind mother had taught her anything, it was to show appreciation whenever, and to whomever it was due.

But later, when Sansa had sat down to pen her thanks, a plain little note had seemed painfully lacking. She'd considered bringing pastries to Sandor's office, but she had no way of knowing whether he liked sweets, and really it would have been awfully forward to show up unannounced and interrupt his workday. All week she had puzzled over how she could thank him appropriately, and when she had been unable to think of anything she felt as though she had failed all her dear mother's careful instruction.

And then, miraculously, on the very day she had bought the beautiful Mustang, she had run into Sandor at that seedy bar her friends had dragged her to. She had been surprised to realize that she was so elated to see him there, as she could finally thank him properly. He'd seemed content enough to talk to her as well; he had even seemed to be enjoying himself a little bit. Things had gotten awkward toward the end when he was leaving, but after all, they barely knew one another, and he was very different from everyone else she knew. Happily, after meeting up with him, she had finally thought of a suitable way to give her appreciation for all his help.

But first, Sandor had to actually show up at this god forsaken bar like he said he would last week, instead of keeping her waiting while she sat in this dank booth with all these scruffy alcoholics peering at her curiously.

 _Don't be unkind,_ Sansa reminded herself. Sandor liked The Keep, and he wasn't so bad. The bar patrons were a little rough around the edges - alright, a lot rough around the edges - but that was no reason for her to think rude thoughts about them.

Sansa turned the narrow packet over and cringed as she noticed a damp spot on the black tissue paper. Of all the times for her hands to get sweaty again! She placed the wrapped item on the scuffed tabletop and wiped her palms on the long skirt of her lavender dress. She took a sip of ice water, hoping to cool her nerves.

Was it possible that he might not come? No. He had quite clearly stated that he came here _every_ Friday afternoon. And her car was out front, so it would be obvious to him that she was inside. If he didn't show up, it was because he was avoiding her.

The thought that perhaps Sandor did not want to see her again snuffed out the flame of enthusiasm that had lit up as she had prepared his gift all week. It would be a shame to see all her careful work go to waste if he never came.

But then again, she thought hopefully, maybe he was just working late. Unlike most of the people she spent time with, he had a real career with real responsibilities, and that probably sometimes included long afternoons in his office chair.

For some reason, she thought of the last person she had dated, a sweet, babyfaced young man who waited tables while he paid off eighty grand in grad school debt. He'd been kind but aimless, and they had drifted apart amicably. Most of her friends were the same way, being overeducated, underemployed, and strapped with student loans. Sansa had a hard time imagining that Sandor was any of those things.

The front door creaked open, admitting a sliver of sunlight into the dim bar that was quickly blotted out by the figure entering. Sansa snapped out of her reverie and sat up ramrod straight as the large man approached her slowly. She shifted in tense excitement and clasped her hands in her lap.

He was in another one of those rather cheap wrinkle-resistant shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and he had taken off his tie. The top button of his collar was open, making him appear a bit more casual, if not exactly comfortable. His scars were just as frightening as ever, and she had to remind herself not to stare, but he seemed to have combed a bit more of his hair over that side of his face.

"Haven't crashed your car yet, I see," Sandor greeted her warily.

She was so relieved that he had shown up after all that she laughed louder and higher than she meant to. That did not seem to put him at ease, and his eyes shifted restively over her form.

"Please, sit!" She gestured to the bench across from her and Sandor sat down, the seat creaking under his weight.

Sandor eyed Sansa's water glass. "That doesn't look like the pitcher of beer you promised me."

"Oh, right!" To be truthful, Sansa had completely forgotten about that. Well, she could get that for him too, she supposed. But right now, she could not wait any longer; she simply had to see him open his gift. "First, I have something to give you as thanks for all you have done for me." She slid the slim packet across the table.

If Sandor looked wary before, he looked downright suspicious now. Sansa suppressed a grin. How wonderful it would be to see his expression change from skepticism to joy when he saw what she had made for him! "Please, open it," she urged.

With the vigilance of a soldier defusing a bomb, Sandor slid his fingernail along the seam where Sansa had placed a single piece of tape. He glanced at her once more before cautiously unfolding the paper to reveal the gift within.

"It's a tie!" Sansa exclaimed, unable to contain her jubilation any longer, even though Sandor could obviously see that it was, in fact, a tie. Sansa had just known that the grey and white houndstooth silk would be just right for him, so masculine and understated, yet so professional. And now that she could see it next to him in person, she knew that her instincts were exactly right.

Sandor stared down at the gift, his fingers resting lightly on the edge of the table. He didn't seem to know quite what to say.

A shadow of uncertainty darkened her elation. "I - well, I made it for you. I thought the colors would be nice with your eyes."

"You made this. From scratch." The tie lay folded against the dark tissue paper, still untouched.

"I did," Sansa agreed proudly, although Sandor's expression didn't change with this confirmation. He wasn't reacting quite the way that she had envisioned. In fact, he wasn't reacting much at all.

After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, he finally said flatly, "You didn't have to do anything like this."

"I did not have to, but it was my pleasure to do so," she replied, with a little more defensiveness in her tone than she would have liked. He still hadn't so much as touched the tie. Maybe she should show him how well it would fit him. She had sewn it longer and wider than an off-the-rack version so that it would not look so short and skinny against his burly chest, which he would have to appreciate. "Look, I made it long enough for you to wear correctly." She slid out of the her side of the booth and onto his side, then plucked the off the wrapping and and draped it over his shoulders, her knuckles resting on his shirt.

He gasped and jerked back in alarm. Sansa dropped the ends of the tie and pulled her hands away, mortified by her brazenness. What kind of person forced a gift on someone like that? In her eagerness to show off her skill, she had utterly forgotten her manners. "I'm - I'm so sorry. You don't have to try it on, of course," she mumbled into her lap, doused in shame. Red hot humiliation spread from her scalp to her toenails. She hoped he wasn't looking at her as she made to scoot off the bench.

Before she could move further, she felt his warm fingers brushing against her wrist. He cleared his throat and rasped quietly, "It's fine. Show me."

She raised her eyes to his and gave him a small, uncertain smile, then nodded. Maybe he didn't like the gift, but at least he would let her do this. She held the fabric in her hands and deftly made a classic Windsor knot against his throat. His Adam's apple bobbed as she adjusted his collar. As she smoothed the tie down his chest with her palm, she said, "I hope you won't think I'm being prideful by saying that I think it looks very nice on you."

Still, Sandor said nothing, and now he wasn't even looking at the tie. He was staring hard, and not especially cordially, into her eyes.

Sansa's cheeks burned. Evidently, a handmade gift had been too much. She tried to remind herself that it was the thought that counted, and even if Sandor threw the tie in a drawer and never looked at it again, at least she had done the proper thing and expressed her gratitude. Except now she felt even worse, because she had clearly made Sandor feel terribly awkward.

She tried to smooth things over with a lighthearted remark. "Well, if you don't care for the tie, I'm still good for the pitcher." She laughed but it rang false.

Sandor's brows furrowed in disbelief. Finally, the strange spell he had seemed to be under broke and he shook his head violently. "No, that's not - I like it. Very much."

"You don't have to -"

Before she could finish the sentence, he grasped her hand and squeezed it a little too hard. "People don't give me gifts very often - ever, really, so I don't know -" he waved his other hand in the air and groaned in frustration.

Sansa blinked. He was happy. In fact, he was very happy. He just didn't know how to express his own gratitude, which somehow made Sansa feel very sad. She extricated her slightly sore hand from his and patted him gently on the shoulder. "Shall we get that pitcher now?"

Sandor cracked a smirk, which was probably as close to a real smile as she was going to get out of him tonight. "If you're paying."

"Of course."

Sandor whistled for the bartender. As the man approached their table, a loud chirp erupted from the bench that Sansa had previously occupied. "Oh, that's my cell!" she said, and jumped up to check the text.

It was from her roommate.

:::Toilet leaking onto neighbor's ceiling. I'm gone all weekend. Told the plumber u will be there in an hour.:::

Sansa pursed her lips in annoyance. Why did Jeyne always assume she didn't have any plans? Crestfallen, she looked back at Sandor.

Sandor leaned back in his seat, laced his fingers behind his head and cracked his neck. "No pitcher, huh?"

Sansa sighed. "Well, not tonight. I have something of a plumbing emergency back at my apartment. Can we do it next Friday?" she found herself asking before she had really thought it through. After all, how much more did she need to do for Sandor? But maybe it wasn't just about thanking him anymore - he seemed kind of interesting to spend time with.

He gave her another odd look that wasn't quite a smile. "Got a better idea. Take me out for a drive next weekend."

Sansa nodded, pleased at the thought. "It's a date!"

The scarred corner of Sandor's mouth twitched. "Is it?"

Sansa's eyes widened, and she blushed. She hadn't quite thought about it like that.


	4. Chapter 4

The mandatory annual sexual harassment prevention seminar was, in Sandor's opinion, the most utterly pointless, teeth-grindingly frustrating, productivity-killing waste of time that his employer ever required him to attend. Today, it was his special misfortune to be stuck between the snickering morons Slynt and Boros in the windowless conference room as an instructor droned on and on using the exact same curriculum he covered every year.

Of course Sandor's supervisor had to insist that he come today, the same day that he would finally see Sansa again, when he would much rather be holed up in his cubicle with the distraction of tasks that required his full concentration. All week, work had been Sandor's only respite from the constant stream of mental images of red hair and bare shoulders and small crooked smiles. He had sat before his computer, losing himself in complicated formulas and case data details for hours, welcoming the break from the obsession he was starting to develop over the girl who would obviously never actually be interested in him. But now, instead of having a few more hours to pretend that he still had a chance with her before she came to her senses, he was imprisoned in this useless fucking class with his ass glued to this squeaky chair.

Without the distraction that his claims desk provided, all Sandor could think about was all the ways in which he would inevitably fuck up the evening, in the unlikely event that Sansa actually showed up in the first place. There had been a few times when he wished that she had just rejected him outright the first time they had met. It would have been much easier if she had just acted fearful or revolted like most women - then he could have enjoyed the memory of her beauty without the accompanying stomach-churning anxiety that arose from this idiotic pipe dream that she might actually have the faintest sliver of interest in him.

The girl mystified him, with her sweet pleasantries and innocent smiles and feathery touches. And the tie - who in her right mind thought there was some kind of obligation to materially thank a claims adjuster just for doing his job? She must be crazy, or unbearably naive. It would have been better if she had expressed her gratitude by wrapping her pretty thighs around his head. That would have been a 'thank you' that he really would have appreciated.

 _So pathetic, lying to yourself like that. You practically wet your pants when she gave you that little present,_ Cersei murmured from that place inside of Sandor's brain where her nasty cold voice still lived, where she constantly found ways to remind him that he was only good for scaring people with his ruined face. In life, Cersei had had a special talent for finding and pointing out a person's greatest insecurities, so Sandor shouldn't have been surprised that his own internal fears always came out in her voice after she died. But it was still fucking irritating. _You'd die for one kiss from that girl._

Cersei was right, and he would have strangled her if she weren't already burning in hell. Sandor looked down his front at the houndstooth tie. Each morning he had stared into his closet, told himself that the damn thing could stay on its hanger that day, and then thought about Sansa's fingers pressed against his shirt. He had worn it to work every day this week.

In truth, Sandor had known it was too late for him from the moment that Sansa had wrapped that length of fabric around his throat. The girl had cinched that knot up his collar like she was placing a noose around a condemned man's neck.

 _Like she was putting a leash on her dog,_ Cersei corrected. _You'll lay down at her feet and beg for scraps. Or try to hump her leg-_

Cersei's rant was cut off by Slynt, who guffawed especially loudly at the instructor's explanation of "unwelcome advances." Sandor gave him a death glare, which had the intended effect of shutting him up. He would have preferred to bash the sleazy bastard's head in. He might have actually done so if he were still working at Baratheon Lannister, where Joffrey and Cersei didn't care if you assaulted coworkers or snorted lines off your desk or slept with a different client every day of the week, so long as you made them richer - and so long as you didn't report them to the authorities for doing any of those things either.

 _You know that the girl is either daft or insane,_ Cersei started up again. _Maybe both. In any case, she's definitely blind,_ she whispered, her poisonous voice slithering through his mind like a pit viper. _You're so ugly and old._

Even dead and gone, Cersei was still an insufferable cunt who always got the last word. Her hateful laughter faded, and Sandor could only hope that she would leave him alone for a while.

He glanced at the clock on the wall, directly above the projector screen. Another hour of this horseshit left. He groaned and slumped down lower in his chair.

A buzz from the phone in his pocket jolted him upright. Ignoring the instructor's disapproving snort, Sandor pulled the phone out and unlocked the screen. It was a text from Sansa, the first he had received all week. Obviously she must have changed her mind, and was canceling on him at the last minute. He opened the message with trepidation.

::Looking forward to taking you out tonight. See you at 7!::

Sansa, taking him out. Tonight. And she was happy about it. It was incomprehensible.

He was flying.

He was miserable.

* * *

Sansa pirouetted in front of the mirror that hung on her closet door, evaluating her ensemble from all angles. The white scoopneck blouse was flirty without being saucy, and the flared yellow skirt emphasized her narrow waist nicely but didn't cling indecently to her hips. It was a perfectly casual outfit for a perfectly casual outing.

"Outing" was how she had settled on mentally referring to her upcoming evening with Sandor. She found it somewhat difficult to think of going on a real, normal date with him. After all, he wasn't exactly conventional love interest material. He spoke in a way that often bypassed sarcasm and careened straight into intentional boorishness. His attire could use some updating, as well. And it went without mentioning that his scars were horrid; there was simply no kind way to put it.

But some of the coarse things he said were darkly funny, which Sansa enjoyed, though she sometimes felt guilty laughing at some of his coarser comments. Also, he had a real job at which he clearly excelled. His steady employment was a refreshing change from quite a few other men who had recently shown interest in her. And truth be told, his awkwardness was kind of endearing.

Further, Sandor was clearly attracted to her. Sansa would have had to have been blind not to notice the way he had looked at her. He hadn't leered at her like that unctuous coworker of his, but he'd still been pretty obvious. Unlike that slimy Slynt, however, Sandor wasn't trying to make her feel uncomfortable, so she didn't mind too much. In fact, she realized with surprise, she kind of liked it. There was something heady about having a big intimidating man like Sandor in her thrall.

"You look cute," said Jeyne from the doorway, bringing Sansa back to the present.

"Thank you," Sansa replied, her voice chilly. She still hadn't forgiven Jeyne for leaving her to deal with the leaking toilet last week.

Jeyne looked down at her nails with an air of studied nonchalance. "Where'd you say you met this guy again?"

Before Sansa could answer, Margaery passed through the doorframe, gently pushing her other roommate aside as she slipped into the small room. "He helped her scam her insurance company or something," she told Jeyne. "I saw him across the bar a couple weeks ago, but I didn't get a good look at him. He's huge though." The brunette's eyes glinted with a strange enthusiasm.

"He didn't scam the insurance company, he works there," Sansa retorted. She preferred not to talk about Sandor with her friends just yet. In the past, she had heard both of them make disparaging comments about young men's looks and clothes and speech; in fact, she had participated in plenty of those conversations herself. She was ashamed of herself that she felt so relieved to learn that Margaery hadn't noticed Sandor's scars.

Margaery grabbed Sansa's wrist and pulled her toward the bed, where she had spread out several items on the lacy comforter. "Look, I put together a date emergency kit for you. Lip gloss. Breathmints. Pepper spray. Condoms."

Jeyne peered over Margaery's shoulder. "Those last two items send conflicting messages, don't you think?"

Sansa's face flushed hot with embarrassment, flashing in turn from white to red to blotchy purple. "I thank you for your concern, but I am quite sure I will not need pepper spray or -" she glanced at the foil wrapping of the condom, and it wasn't lost on her that Margaery had selected the extra large size - "or anything else," she stated with asperity. She picked up the offending items and handed them back to her friend. "We're just going for a drive, and maybe grab a bite to eat."

Jeyne and Margaery wore matching mocking smiles on their faces, but neither responded. Sansa narrowed her eyes at them. She had had enough of this nonsense. She snatched her purse off the dresser and slipped on her sandals, then gave both of her roommates a look that she hoped communicated that it was time for them to leave her room.

"You're being suspiciously closed-lipped about this fellow," Margaery remarked, looking like she was in no hurry to move.

"Well, he's tall, and he has a job," Jeyne piped up. "That's an improvement over Sansa's last boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend," Sansa protested.

"Yet," Margaery winked as she pressed the condom into Sansa's palm.

* * *

The light knock on the door signaled to Sandor that Sansa had not, as he had fully expected, stood him up. He'd been sitting on the couch with the TV tuned to a program that he wasn't really watching in a futile attempt to stop staring at the clock. Now she was here, just behind a thin slab of wood, standing outside his very apartment. His hand managed to hit the power button on the remote, but his legs did not seem to want to move.

This was pathetic. He could bench press almost 350 pounds. How could a tiny little woman leave him so weak that he couldn't even stand up?

After a moment he shook off the shock and rose, straightening his black shirt and adjusting his jeans as he did so. He hoped that his hair looked relatively combed, but there was only one small mirror in the house, and Sandor had not, in any case, been able to bear to look at his reflection tonight, not when he knew that it would only demoralize him when he needed all the confidence he could muster.

"Hello? Sandor?" Sansa knocked again.

"Quit your pecking at my door, little bird, I'm coming." He breathed in deeply, popped his jaw from side to side. It was now or never. He twisted the handle and pulled the door open.

Sansa stood before him, her hair pulled back into a high, long ponytail, a swipe of red gloss on her lips. "Hi," she said, and smiled at him.

Sandor's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as he took her in. He still couldn't quite believe she was here, standing on his doorstep, and in a short skirt no less. Had she really dressed up like this, specifically to see him? No, she had probably just come from work something. It didn't matter. Seeing those pale legs again made all the angsting of the past week worth it. "Hello," he responded, forcing his mouth to make a sound that approximated a word.

"Are you ready?" Sansa asked brightly as she jangled her keys. "I brought some iced coffees for us in the car. I hope you don't mind cream and sugar."

 _Not from you, girl._ "That'll work." He stepped out of his dark apartment and into the afternoon sunlight, then locked the door behind him. Sansa's car was parked just a few feet from his stoop, right next to the Bronco, and it looked like she'd gotten it freshly washed. "So where are we headed?"

"I thought we could take Kingsroad Highway for a bit and go up into the hills where all the fancy houses are. There are some twisty roads up there that might be fun to try out in the Mustang."

Sandor nodded, relieved that she hadn't said "Wherever you want to go" for fear of replying that he would just as soon take her back to his bedroom. But her idea sounded like a pretty good plan that might even a little bit fun. He followed her to the car.

Sansa approached the driver's side, then paused and turned toward him. Her hair whipped around behind her, and he got a whiff of flowery perfume. "Would you like to drive?" she asked.

It seemed awfully trusting of her, even a little naive, to offer to hand over the keys to him. He happened to be an excellent driver - years of processing serious auto injury claims tended to have that effect on a person - but Sansa didn't know that. He shook his head. "You drive for a while first." Besides, that way he could watch her while her eyes were on the road and drink up how beautiful she looked before it got dark.

Sandor opened the car door and crammed himself into the passenger seat. The Mustang wasn't small for a coupe, but he was so large that the top of his head brushed the ceiling when he got in. His arm spilled over onto the console, and it was all he could do not to crowd Sansa's side.

Sansa raised her eyebrow in concern. "My goodness, perhaps we shouldn't take such a long drive," she remarked. "You don't seem very comfortable there."

Sandor narrowed his eyes. He would have folded himself into a Fiat if it meant that he would get to spend more time sitting next to Sansa. "You've seen my cubicle. It is not much bigger than this. I'll be fine."

"If you say so," she replied, appearing to have her doubts. "Let's go!"

The drive up Kingsroad as the sun set below the foothills was like a promotional picture for a tourism campaign. The dense city buildings quickly petered out into affluent, leafy suburbs. Sansa and Sandor rolled down their windows and let the warm evening air whoosh through the car interior. Sansa pointed out houses and gardens that she thought were especially striking and remarked that she rarely came out to this part of the county, since her friends mostly just liked to go to the same bars and clubs. Sandor agreed with her to keep her talking, to let the melody of her voice wash over him. As they drove further into the hills, she told him about how her family lived up north, and how they always complained that she didn't visit them enough. Sandor had nothing pleasant to add to any discussion about family, so he just grunted.

Before he knew it, an hour had passed and he was amazed to discover that he had been enjoying himself so much that he'd forgotten to think a single self-loathing or angry thought during the entire drive.

When they reached a gas station, Sansa pulled over so they could switch places. Sandor took the wheel, and he got to test how well the Mustang hugged the road. When he took a hairpin turn faster than Sansa was expecting, she squealed in surprise. He liked it. He accelerated into another curve to try to get her to make that sound again.

When he did it a third time, she gasped his name in admonishment and teasingly slapped his hand on the gearshift. Maybe, just maybe, this evening wasn't going to be the total disaster he had envisioned.

As the last pink light faded from the sky, Sansa's stomach gurgled loudly enough for Sandor to hear. He glanced over at her with a smirk. "You may look like a little bird, but your belly is roaring like a bear."

She took out her phone and scrolled with a graceful, pointed finger. In the glow of the screen Sandor could see that her cheeks were bright red. "I'm really quite hungry, but I kind of forgot that there wouldn't be very many options for dining out here."

It was just as well. Sandor _hated_ eating in restaurants. It was bad enough having some waitress gawk at his face while she was supposed to be serving him, but it was downright humiliating to have people stare as he struggled to keep the food and drink from coming out of the burned side of his mouth. And who knew what kind of nasty looks people would give Sansa for sitting at a table with somebody who looked like him?

"Drive-thru?" he suggested, hoping it sounded practical rather than cheap.

"Actually, it looks like there's a pizza by the slice place down the street," she rejoined. "The website says it's across from a park that has a nice view of the city. Could be a nice place to sit and eat and chat."

Sandor gazed at her a little too long, and he overcorrected when he finally put his eyes back on the road. Sansa made that little squealing sound again, and this time it sent Sandor's blood singing through his veins. "Sounds like a plan," Sandor rasped. "You're the navigator, so tell me how to get there."

Sansa took a bite of the hot slice and sighed at the heavenly flavor. Most of the time, she tried to convince herself that kale salads and carrot sticks were just as good as pizza, but at this moment she had to admit that nothing could possibly beat the satisfying taste of melted cheese and tomato sauce on a slab of refined carbs.

She and Sandor sat side by side on the top of a picnic table, their feet resting on the bench below, so that they could both have a nice view of the city lights. A few other couples and families were sitting on blankets and benches nearby, but they were too far away to be intrusive. Even though the sun had set, the air was still warm, and the moonlight lit up the grassy, sloping park. Sansa stole a glance at Sandor, who was licking his fingers.

He gave her a smile that might have been sheepish on a face that wasn't so fearsome. "Guess I was pretty hungry too."

Sansa laughed. It was just wonderful to see Sandor at ease in her presence. She took another bite of pizza and wondered if the evening could possibly be any more pleasant. Well, there was one thing. "I wish I had bought some soda or something to wash down my dinner."

"You're in luck. Well, sort of," Sandor said. From the far side of the table he produced a pint of rum and twisted open the sealed top, then placed it between the two of them on the tabletop. "Got this in the liquor store next to the pizza place while you were picking up our food."

Sansa eyed the bottle warily. She liked wine and the occasional light beer, and she had been known to get tipsy on mimosas at brunch, but she wasn't much of one for hard liquor. Still, she didn't want to be rude. "I probably shouldn't have much. I want to get us both home safely."

Sandor looked downright offended that she would suggest that he would allow her to drive drunk. "Please, woman. My job is to assess damages from car accidents. There is no way I am going to let you drink too much. Here now, just a swig." He nudged the bottle in her direction. "If you want," he added quietly.

"Why not?" she shrugged. If she hated it, she didn't have to keep drinking it. She wiped her fingertips on a napkin and brought the bottle to her mouth to take a careful sip. It was smoother than she thought it would be, like warm brown sugar sliding along her tongue. She licked her lips and handed the bottle back to Sandor.

"Me on the other hand, I'm not driving. Cheers." He took a long glug.

The corner of Sansa's mouth turned upward as she watched Sandor drink. In profile, his scars did not show, but even without them, he was not very conventionally attractive. He was so big, his huge muscles almost grotesque on his giant frame. He had dark body hair just about everywhere that his skin was exposed except on the scarred part of his face. But when he set the bottle down and he looked back at her, his eyes danced with light and Sansa felt a thrilling flutter beneath her ribcage.

Sandor's eyes rested on the hemline of her skirt a little longer than was entirely appropriate. Sansa cleared her throat and he looked back up at her, with an expression on his face that was not quite as contrite as it should have been for having gotten caught blatantly checking her out. It wasn't that Sansa minded his eyes on her - far from it - it was the principle of the thing.

Sandor shook his head and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "So did you come straight from work?" he asked, as if he were casting about for any topic of conversation.

Sansa laughed at the ridiculous notion. "Oh, heavens no. I couldn't possibly be seen around town in the unflattering black suit they make me wear. I would look hideous."

Sandor gave her a glare then that surprised her, his teasing demeanor rapidly shifting into anger. She didn't understand. Had she said something wrong?

He took another drink of rum and set the bottle down harder than was necessary. "Girl, you're a fucking knockout and you know it. Don't say stupid fucking things because you think you're supposed to be modest." Sandor spat into the grass. "And don't talk to me about looking hideous," he growled, gesturing to his scars.

Oh. How cruel she had been to say something so thoughtless to him. She tried to smooth things over, even as she filed away the words "fucking knockout" for later consideration. "You don't look hideous!" she protested, but his face contorted into an angry sneer.

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not! You're not hideous. You're just very . . . " Sansa paused, searching for a descriptor that was both true and positive, "very . . ." or a word that was at least neutral, ". . . large."

Sandor still stared at her hard. Oh dear. She had offended him for sure this time. But then he smirked, which quickly widened into a grin and then morphed into loud, raucous laughter. The couple sitting at the picnic bench a dozen yards away turned to look at them, confused.

Relieved, Sansa smiled and was soon laughing almost as hard as he was.

"'Large.' Aye, that I am." He stretched his arms up above his head and cracked his neck, which only served to emphasize the point. Seeing his muscles flex in the moonlight, Sansa decided that his largeness was a positive characteristic after all.

Sandor dropped his arms to his sides. "So why do you have to wear an ugly black suit to work? Are you a funeral director?"

Why did his mind always jump to the darkest possible conclusion? She wondered again about his scars, and how deeply they must have hurt him. She vowed to keep his mind off that unpleasantness for as long as possible. "I work at a bridal salon." She thought she saw his eye twitch at that. "What?"

"That sounds about right. The perfect lady Sansa, transforming the commoners into princesses for a day." He seemed to find the notion greatly amusing.

Men could be so frustratingly dismissive about weddings. No wonder so many of the women who came into the store were fed up with their fiances. "Not exactly," she said, pursing her lips. "I assist the salesladies - I take measurements, bring out dresses for the customers to try on, those kinds of things. Sometimes I do alterations when we're really busy."

Sandor was still smiling in a way that suggested he was teasing her. "And is that what you want to do for the rest of your life?"

"Well, I do enjoy helping the brides feel beautiful on their wedding day." She felt a special sense of purpose when she saw a woman find the right dress. She liked to imagine how their grooms would gaze lovingly at them as they saw their beautiful wife-to-be walking down the aisle toward them. The romance of those moments helped make up for the reality that her coworkers were bossy and the store owner didn't pay her enough. "But -" she lowered her voice. Should she tell him her dream? Would he mock her? It was time to find out. "Someday I'd like to own my own shop, maybe design the dresses myself."

Sandor only nodded and looked off toward the city lights, twinkling in the distance. "You could do it. You're a good seamstress," he replied without sarcasm. He handed the nearly empty bottle back to her.

Sansa took another small sip of the rum, feeling more pleased with Sandor's acknowledgement than she should have. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

She felt like she had been talking about herself all night. How had that happened? Usually she was so conscientious about making sure that she balanced out the conversation. But Sandor had seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say, and he hadn't volunteered much information about himself. Well, she couldn't let him think that she was self-absorbed, and she did want to know more about him.

He worked in insurance. She didn't know much about that sort of job, and frankly she wasn't sure how much of a conversation starter the topic might be - admittedly, insurance didn't seem like the most exciting career choice - but it was worth a try. She crossed her legs, sat up straight, and leaned toward him. "Have you worked as a claims adjuster for very long?"

Sandor grunted and took the bottle back from her, his fingers brushing against hers as he did so. "A while." He finished off the last of the rum in a single gulp.

She was disappointed that he didn't volunteer more. Sansa pressed on. "Is it - do you find that interesting?"

He seemed to know what she was thinking. "Not many people do. But I like the math. And it's honest work." He tilted his head thoughtfully, as if trying to decide whether to go on. "I used to do commercial underwriting for a Fortune 500 insurer. There was a lot more prestige in that line of work, but after a while I got tired of being ordered to cheat clients just to make a couple rich shitheads even richer."

The acidic tone of his voice told Sansa that there was more to his story than that, but she felt it would have been impolite to press for more information.

Sandor rubbed the back of his neck, and his bicep flexed again in that way Sansa had noticed earlier as being rather interesting. "Anyway, that company went under, my stock options turned to shit, and I went over to Kingsguard for a steady paycheck and a quiet cubicle."

"You must be very good at it. Your colleague Mr. Slynt called you the Hound, because you can sniff out fraud."

Sandor laughed drily. "That's what he said, did he?" He made a fist and set it against the flat side of his palm, cracking his knuckles loudly. "Well, there's a little more to it than that, but he's not wrong. I'm good at my job."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence and gazed out across the field and down at the vista beyond it. The fireflies had come out, and their flickering lights blended in with the glow of the city.

After a while, Sandor sighed heavily. "You probably want to know about how I got my scars," he stated flatly.

He was testing her. He had to be. Sansa felt like he was trying to find a chink in the armor of her courtesies. Frankly she resented it a little bit, that he would be trying to provoke her into saying something inadvertently insulting after they'd been having such a lovely time together. But it was clear that he had been thinking about the scars, and since he was so was painfully self-conscious about them, she knew that she had to tread carefully. "Whatever happened, it must have been very traumatic for you," she said quietly.

He nodded and swallowed, held up the bottle and plunked it back down when he realized that he had already drunk the last drop.

That had to be a sign. He seemed compelled to have to talk about it with her, but if she let him start telling the story now, he would probably just get melancholy. She wanted to end this evening on a happy note, not a brooding one. And, she was not proud to admit, in the back of her head was a tiny voice that told her that she wasn't sure she was ready to hear the story yet. "You know, we're having such a nice time. I don't want you to have to talk about something so difficult - not unless you want to, of course," she added, and patted his knee reassuringly. "Why don't you tell me next time?"

He looked down where she was touching him and placed his big palm on the top of her hand. "So there'll be a next time, then?" he murmured.

Sansa met his eyes, her face suddenly feeling very warm and close to his. But before she could say anything, Sandor broke eye contact and looked away, shamefaced.

"I hope so," Sansa whispered. At first she that thought he didn't hear her, but then he squeezed her hand lightly. Sansa smiled to herself and laced her fingers with his in response.

They drove home without speaking much. But what else needed to be said? The night had flown by with good conversation. Everything had gone so well. Sometimes Sansa found that Sandor was hard to read, but he certainly seemed to have had a nice time with her, and he was obviously much more comfortable with her than he had been previously. When she'd first picked him up this afternoon, she hadn't been quite sure what to expect, but she'd learned that Sandor was a very interesting individual - one who possessed some attractive qualities that she had not noticed when she had first met him.

And his hand had been so warm. She wished that he would take her hand in his again while she drove, but obviously that was out of the question in a stick shift vehicle.

But what was holding hands, when she had a goodnight kiss to look forward to? He _would_ kiss her, of course. She hadn't been blind to his gazes, or numb to his touches. He wanted to kiss her, and badly, and Sansa would happily allow him to do so.

She wondered what it would be like. Would his mouth feel different than those of other men she had kissed because of the scars? Would he taste like the rum they had shared? And his beard - would it scratch her face? Tickle her cheek?

She glanced at him out of the side of her eye, feeling relaxed and confident. To her surprise, he looked tense and uncomfortable. She couldn't see much in the darkness, but she could tell that he was clutching the armrest more forcefully than necessary. It didn't make sense. He was the one who had drunk all that liquor, not her, so he should be feeling calm and composed. And she had told him that she'd like to have another date. What could he possibly be worried about?

She pulled into the spot next to his Bronco and shut the car off. "Well, here we are," she said unnecessarily, wishing that he would just look at her, or say something teasing and flirtatious like earlier. Why wasn't he already cupping her face in his hand, pressing his lips to hers? He did know what he was supposed to do at the end of a date, didn't he?

Maybe he just needed a little push. "Until next time, then," she prompted, and leaned toward him, across the console.

He placed his hand over hers. Yes! Here it was. She closed her eyes and tilted her face toward him.

"Er - right. Next time," he stuttered. Really it was rather sweet when he was flustered. She took a deep breath in anticipation.

She waited eagerly for the warmth of his lips. But instead she heard the click of the car door and felt the whoosh of cold air coming inside. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw that he was exiting the car as fast as his bulk would allow him. "Goodnight, little bird," he rasped, then shut the car door and stumbled into his apartment, slamming the door behind him.

Sansa sat in her car alone, bewildered and disappointed. What in heaven's name had just happened?! She couldn't believe he had been so abrupt, so rude, now of all times!

Well, she simply had to correct his mistake. She had let him get away with plenty of impolite behavior tonight, but this was too much. It wasn't even about the kiss, per se. It was the principle of the matter - and a kiss at the end of a date was just good manners. She stepped out of the car and marched up to his apartment.

Sandor pulled open the door while she was still knocking. Behind him, the interior of his place was dark. He gave her a confused look, and her self-righteousness wavered.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, perplexed, and looked past her to make sure that all was well.

"Yes." She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and took a deep breath. "You were supposed to give me a kiss goodnight."

Sandor tilted his head as though he had misheard her. "What?"

She smoothed her skirt across her legs and crossed her arms across her chest. "I said, you were supposed to give me a kiss goodnight. It is what a gentleman does at the end of a nice evening."

This time, Sandor actually stuck his finger into his ear, still trying to determine whether he had heard her correctly. "Girl, is there anything about me that reminds you of a fucking gentleman?"

She took in his wild hair, his massive frame, his grey eyes flashing in the yellow light of the streetlamp. He had a point.

"It's just . . . What is supposed to be done."

He gaped at her like she was crazy, or mocking him, and she worried that she had completely misread the entire situation, and she feared that he was just as likely to throw her off his doorstep as he was to plant a kiss on her lips. But now was not the time to let nerves take over, not when she was so close to attaining what she came here for. Sansa squared her shoulders defiantly, channeled the brazen girl who drove the green Mustang.

"Do you want me to?" he asked disbelievingly.

This was getting ridiculous. Why else would she be standing here, looking increasingly like a little fool? "Don't you - don't you want to?"

"Since the day you came into my cubicle." With a single step he closed the distance between them, bent down, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her to him so tightly that she squeaked as he pressed his lips to hers. It all happened so fast that her eyes were still wide open and her arms were just flopping around, and it took her a moment to remember that she should return his embrace and kiss him back. She opened her mouth and his tongue slid past her teeth, making things a bit slobbery, really, but what he lacked in technique he made up for in enthusiasm. She gasped and arched into him as his fingers dug into her back. Her response only seemed to inflame him further, and he lifted her completely off the ground, finally breaking away.

He was breathing hard. "Was that the kind of kiss a gentleman gives his lady?"

"No," she replied, equally out of breath. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand in a deeply unladylike fashion. "But I liked it anyway."


	5. Chapter 5

"Was that the kind of kiss a gentleman gives his lady?" Sandor rumbled as he set Sansa back onto her feet gently.

"No," Sansa replied, her eyes dancing as she wiped her mouth. "But I liked it anyway."

Pride swelled in Sandor's chest, bubbled over. "I did too," he murmured. He leaned in again and bit her lower lip, felt her lithe arms wrap around his neck and her long graceful fingers grasp at his hair. When she swiped her tongue across the bristles above his upper lip, he groaned and pulled her waist hard up against his hips.

Sansa sighed, and Sandor tasted the hint of rum on her breath. "I have to work tomorrow," she mumbled into his mouth, sounding unenthusiastic about the fact. Her hands slid from the back of his neck to his chest, her fingernails snagging against the fabric of his shirt.

"That's tomorrow. Kiss me again," Sandor urged, pressing his lips to hers. If Sansa was hinting that she needed to go home soon, she would have to be more direct than that. He didn't know when or if she would ever let him touch her like this again, and he wasn't going to waste this opportunity. He held her in place with one palm against the small of her back while he ran his other hand up her ribcage, brushing his thumb against the underwire edge of her bra. He wished he could feel the undergarment without the sheer blouse getting in the way.

After another long kiss, Sansa lolled back, as if dazed. She nudged the tip of her nose against his. "I'm not working on Sunday though," she breathed dreamily.

"Oh," Sandor grunted. He nipped at her lips again. This time when Sansa opened her mouth and touched her tongue to his, it was all he could do to suppress the urge to throw her over his shoulder and steal her through the open door of his apartment. He settled for rubbing his beard against her smooth cheek.

"I'm quite free, in fact," Sansa continued, her voice catching at the end as Sandor nuzzled her earlobe.

 _God, woman, we talked all night. Stop yapping so I can kiss you some more._ "Mm hmm," he hummed, working his lips down her jaw, toward her neck. He twisted her ponytail around his hand and tugged her head back gently so that he could taste the smooth skin on her throat.

She must have liked that a lot. She exhaled harshly and dug a fingernail against the skin exposed above his collar, and he lay a nice long lick up her throat in return. But still she kept up with the blasted babbling. "Quite free, all day."

Disgruntled, Sandor finally pulled away. Trying to keep the irritation out of his tone, he growled, "You chirp so prettily, little bird, but I would just as soon have your mouth on mine right now."

Sansa arched her perfectly plucked eyebrow, not appearing especially amused by his comment. "I am just trying to tell you," she said as she placed her palms on his shoulders and squeezed pointedly, "again," emphasizing each word, "that I am not doing anything on Sunday."

"Yes, I heard you..." he ground out through clenched teeth. Sansa was trying to get him to understand something, but in the haze of arousal he found it difficult to discern what it was. He stepped back further and held her forearms, peered at her flushed face in the yellow streetlight. _Concentrate, you old fool._ Sunday. She was free that day and she wanted him to know it.

 _Oh._ No, it couldn't be, could it? But Sansa had claimed that she wanted to see him again, which still didn't entirely make sense. It seemed even more unlikely that she would want to make specific plans at this very moment. "You're telling me to ask you out again? Right now?" he sputtered.

"Of course not. That would be presumptuous of me." She dropped her gaze to his chest and picked at a shirt button with her index finger. "But if you did, I would say yes."

 _This girl_ , Sandor thought, gawking at her incredulously. She could be bold as a band groupie, but for some reason she felt the need to cast herself in the role of the shy and gracious debutante. Didn't she realize that she had thrown the whole script into the fire the moment she started spending time with someone like him? Her ability to demand what she wanted, when he struggled so much to do the same with her, made him feel like a coward. Her clear desire to see him again made him feel like a king. "Fine. Come out with me on Sunday," he muttered, trying to act casual about it.

"Really?" She made it sound as though Sandor had come up with the idea himself, as though she hadn't even dared think about it until he brought it up. "It would be my pleasure to do so." She beamed up at him with an expression that, as far as Sandor could tell, was entirely genuine.

Sandor grimaced down at her, uneasy about how efficiently the little bird had played him, whether she was admitting it to herself or not. _Little bird, hell_. More like a ruthless falcon who would pierce his heart with her talons, thinking to pass herself off as a harmless finch. An icy stream of apprehension flowed into the river of lust coursing through his veins.

And then, before he could process what was happening, Sansa raised herself up on her tip toes and brushed the gentlest of kisses against the scarred corner of his mouth. Sandor stood still as stone, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe. She gave him one final smile as she slipped from his arms.

She glided back toward her car, caught her heel against the curb and tripped a bit before catching herself. She laughed nervously and waved, demonstrating that she was alright.

Sandor smirked. Perhaps he wasn't the only one feeling off-balance from the last few hours.

As Sansa opened the car door, she waved again and called, "Send me a text with the details for Sunday. I can't wait!" And then she was behind the wheel, reversing out of the parking space, and gone, and the only evidence left of her presence was the afterimage of her headlights streaking across Sandor's vision.

Sandor backed into his apartment and shut the door. He rubbed the hollow of his throat where Sansa had scratched him, and his mind replayed fantasies of every indecent thing he had ever imagined doing to her. But for some reason he kept looping back to the sweet chaste kiss she had just given him, and the promise it held.

As extraordinary as his Friday night had been, Sandor's Saturday was as unremarkable as any other. He rose early and trimmed his beard and bolted down some eggs and coffee. Then he spent a couple hours at the gym, weightlifting with the same group of guys he saw there each week; they weren't his friends, exactly, but they didn't eyeball his scars and they spotted him on the weight bench. After that, he ran the usual errands - groceries, dry cleaning - and went back home to perform the necessary chores - laundry, taking out the garbage - and by the time he was finished with all that, it was late afternoon and he figured that he could text Sansa without seeming like the desperate old dog that he feared she was turning him into.

Sandor sat on the couch and cradled his phone in one hand. All day while he had performed his routine, he had mentally proposed, assessed, and rejected a dozen potential ideas for taking Sansa out. As he stared at the open, blank message with the blinking cursor on the screen, he finally just admitted to himself that he didn't have the slightest notion of what pretty young ladies like Sansa did for fun. Maybe he should just call it all off, keep the memory of the previous night whole and unsullied and keep his remaining shards of pride intact. But that last tantalizing kiss she gave him - as much as his instincts screamed at him to get the hell out while he still could, he couldn't give up another possible shot at finding out what that was about.

While wracking his brain for ideas, Sandor recalled a woman he hadn't thought about in a long time. Many years ago at Baratheon Lannister, back when he made so much more money but was so much more miserable, there had been a blonde customer service rep with crooked teeth and nice wide hips who would sometimes ask him to take her to the weeknight horse races at the track, and afterward she would let him come back to her apartment. It soon became apparent to Sandor that she suffered from an all-consuming gambling problem and needed his cash to fuel her addiction. At the time, however, he was just relieved to have found a woman who would sleep with him, even though she always turned her face away when he tried to kiss her and always kept the lights off and practically shoved him out the door when they were finished. Eventually she found another well-compensated sucker in another department with a normal face, and she'd ignore Sandor when she passed him in the hall.

The experience had put him off blondes forever, but the racetrack itself had always been enjoyable enough. _What the hell, it's as good an idea as any,_ he thought with resignation. _Or as bad._ He typed the message and hit 'send' before he could change his mind.

Ultimately, it didn't matter where he took her. Sandor would be wondering the whole time when or whether Sansa would kiss him again.

The next afternoon, Sandor slouched on the stairs that led up to his neighbor's apartment as he flipped through work emails on his phone and waited for Sansa to show. Ever the gracious guest, she had offered to meet him at his place since it was on the way to the track. The sun beat down on Sandor's forehead, and his navy t-shirt stuck to his skin as sweat trickled down his back. Sansa would have to arrive soon or he'd have to go back inside to change clothes. Of course, he might have been perspiring this much anyway, even if it were the dead of winter, given how restless the girl made him. He scrolled down his screen reflexively, wishing another email would arrive to distract him.

Sandor heard the guttural growl of the Mustang's engine and he lifted his head. There was Sansa, pulling into what he was starting to think of as her usual spot, even though she'd only been here once before. She hopped out of the car and flashed a tilted smile that just about punched his stomach through his spine. Her long loose tank top and shorts weren't doing him any favors either - they were going to make it damnably difficult for him to concentrate on stuff like talking and driving.

Sansa walked over and stood before him, her hands clasped in front of her around a small square purse thing. "I'm really looking forward to this," Sansa greeted him breathlessly as she took her sunglasses off. "I've never been to a horse race before."

Sitting there on the stairs, Sandor found his eyes exactly level with Sansa's bustline, which didn't do much for his power of speech. He needed to reply to her, but all he could think about was how she had been standing in almost exactly that spot just a couple days earlier, pressing her body and her lips to his. Judging by the pinkness of Sansa's cheeks, she was probably thinking about the same thing. "Well then," he said as he finally got his mouth working, looking up to her eyes, "Your first time might as well be with me."

She blushed even redder and prettier at that, and Sandor didn't feel so much as a twinge of guilt at eliciting that response.

After some awkward negotiating over who should drive, Sandor and Sansa got into the Bronco together. When Sandor turned the key in the ignition, the stereo erupted with the shriek of an electric guitar being mercilessly thrashed into submission. _Fuck, of course_ , he thought, fumbling to turn it down.

Sansa's eyes widened in surprise. "Is that - were you listening to Cannibal Star?"

Sandor was taken aback. Never in a million years would he have expected Sansa to recognize the classic rock gods he had worshipped as a kid. "You like them?" he asked, astounded but pleased.

"Well..." She hesitated. "My dad does." She giggled and shrugged apologetically, then, belatedly realizing what she was implying, clapped her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that you're old -"

"At least I'm old enough to know what good music is, unlike you," Sandor huffed, his pleasure bursting like a balloon on a pin. The last thing he wanted to do was remind her of his age. "But I'm younger than your father. I hope," he added grumpily, slamming the vehicle in reverse and pulling out of the parking lot. He couldn't be more than ten years older than she was, but the decade weighed him down like a kettlebell tied around his neck, submerging him even further beneath a level worthy of Sansa's notice.

Sansa reached over and touched his forearm, starting with an affectionate pat that transitioned into a lingering caress. "You are a bit older than me, but that's fine. You have so many interesting experiences to share."

The gentle contact should have lifted his mood back out of the stormclouds, but her remark left him feeling sullen. _Not all experiences are good, or worth sharing, my naive little bird._

Sandor's humor didn't improve until after they made it to the track, when Sansa insisted that he explain everything to her in detail. She asked all about the horses, the jockeys, the rules of the race. He knew that she was trying to cheer him up, which first made him angry at her and then angry at himself for blaming her for something that wasn't her fault. He finally started feeling better when they checked out the animals in the paddock and Sansa declared that she would make wagers on all of the most beautiful horses. Sandor opened his mouth to tell her that she would do better to choose the ugliest, meanest piece of meat with legs and teeth that she could find, but then she hooked her wrist into his elbow to draw his attention to a handsome stocky roan and he knew that he would willingly let her throw away his last cent on a loser horse so long as she kept her arm in his.

After placing their bets at the window, they made their way up to the back of the stands, in the shade of the wide awning where fewer spectators sat. The sun beat down on the track before them, and the smell of mud and cut grass hung in the humid air. It was the most perfect of summer days, and by the time they sat down, not even the occasional stranger's stare could dampen Sandor's mood.

"Do you think I will win anything today?" Sansa asked, looking up at him earnestly and placing her hand on his shoulder. It must have been his imagination, but she seemed to be finding excuses to touch him today. The confidence that he hadn't felt since Friday night finally began to seep back.

"Could be," he shrugged. "It's called gambling for a reason. Means that anything could happen." His eyes flicked down to the low neckline of her shirt and the corner of his mouth twitched.

Sansa's face flushed pink again and she looked away demurely, but Sandor swore he noticed the hint of a curve along her lips.

Both of them lost money on the first several races, but Sandor won a few bucks when a big angry-looking black stallion came in first, and in the last race a brown mare Sansa had chosen flew like a banshee from behind the pack as she rounded the final curve. Sansa leapt from her seat to cheer her on, and Sandor was afforded a memorable view of her pert backside. The mare placed second, which meant that Sansa finally won something, and in her excitement she flopped back in her seat and embraced him, her cheek bumping up against his. After that Sandor felt a little off-kilter.

They collected their modest winnings at the window and walked out to the parking lot as the sun sank low in the sky. Sansa brushed her wrist against Sandor's knuckles and with a surge of courage he grabbed her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. He caught her eye and she looked away again, biting her bottom lip to hide a smile, but she held onto him all the same.

"Would you like to go someplace else? Maybe get something to eat?" Sansa asked as they got back into the Bronco.

 _Shit, not this again._ Sandor had not thought to make plans beyond this. But clearly Sansa wasn't quite ready to go home.

If she pressed him he would take her to a restaurant, but he wanted to avoid that if at all possible. He brought up the first alternative that popped into his head. "Got a chicken and some vegetables I could roast, back at my place. Would only take an hour or so to put together. Got some wine too."

Sansa gave him a queer look, and Sandor wished he could take it all back. Of course she would feel uncomfortable going back to his place, for him to cook of all things. But instead of declining like he thought she would, she questioned, "You know how to roast a chicken? In the oven?"

Sandor blinked, baffled. "That's the usual way," he replied doubtfully. Was she mocking him? It was a strange thing to tease someone about. "Doesn't everyone know how to do that?"

She ran a finger along the seam of the vinyl seat and gazed down into her lap. "I - I don't. I don't really know how - I am still learning to cook."

That certainly wasn't what Sandor had expected her to say. He couldn't hold back a hoarse guffaw. "Is that why you are so tiny? You don't know how to put a meal together?"

Sansa's lips flattened into a flat tight line. She seemed to be struggling to conceal her consternation as she explained, "My mother never taught me, and in college there was a cafeteria. I've been working quite hard for the last few years and it just hasn't been a priority of mine."

He laughed again, a short bark of astonishment. "You're a woman grown and out of the house! Feeding yourself should be a priority."

She folded her arms in front of her chest and jerked her chin up, staring out the windshield at nothing in particular. "You can tease me all you like, but it doesn't change the fact that I don't know how," she sniffed.

So he had finally hit a nerve with the girl. He was tempted to laugh again but thought better of it. Really, though, it was appalling that she didn't have such a basic life skill. Then again, no one had taught him anything and he had figured it out well enough. "Only one solution then," he said, rolling his shoulders as he turned on the car. "You'll need to learn, starting tonight."

* * *

Sansa stood on the stoop of Sandor's apartment, thinking about what her mother would say about her ending up at a man's place on the second date. She wouldn't be too upset, Sansa supposed; it was only a cooking lesson and dinner. And possibly a little making out. _Hopefully_ , Sansa mentally corrected. Her face burned partly from embarrassment, but mostly from excitement, that she would be so mischievous to even think such a thing. Well, in any case, Mother did not need to know about the details of tonight.

At least Sansa was _on_ a real date. One of her college boyfriends had run his hands up under her blouse every chance he got but never so much as offered to accompany her to the cafeteria. Come to think of it, Mother hadn't known about the details of that arrangement either.

Sandor unlocked the door and held it open for Sansa. She peered into the dim interior. The front door opened into a modest living room with a squashy blue couch and a big TV on a media cabinet with a snarl of wires snaking to the outlet. Beyond that was a dining alcove and a dingy, dated galley kitchen, and a hallway that presumably led to the bedrooms and bathroom. The walls were as devoid of personal effects as those of his cubicle back at work; only a set of free weights lined up on the grey carpet in front of the TV hinted that he had any interests at all. Or maybe the carpet was tan. In any case, it could have used a good shampooing. The place smelled dusty and felt stuffy.

"What do you think?" Sandor asked, flicking on a few more lights as he came in behind her.

Sansa struggled to think of something complimentary. "It must be wonderful to live by yourself," she tried. That was a true enough sentiment. She hoped that the expression on her face did not betray her tepid opinion.

Sandor chuckled, low and hoarse. "It's a shithole. Cheap though." He lumbered into the kitchen, which made the place seem even smaller, and she followed him. "But you're right about living alone. No pain-in-the-arse nosy roommates getting in the way when I have company." He smirked at her over his shoulder as he started pulling pans and knives and potatoes out of the cupboards.

Company? Sansa wasn't quite sure what to make of that remark. She definitely hadn't imagined Sandor to be a playboy - frankly, that was one of the reasons she found him appealing - but then again, just a few weeks ago she wouldn't have imagined that she would have been interested in spending time with him at all. A bullet of jealousy shot through her, which shocked her almost as much as the idea that Sandor might have girls over all the time. It was necessary to remain poised as she tried to discern the truth. "Do you -" she cleared her throat as Sandor flopped a whole raw chicken onto a cutting board - "Do you entertain much?"

"Right, that's me, a buggering dinner party host. Not very likely," Sandor muttered, his good eyebrow twitching as he extracted a bloody package of organs out of the chicken. "I only invited _you_ here because you're so helpless. Can't cook, can't keep your car safe -"

Sansa sighed, distressed that he was still mocking her lack of independence, but relieved as the envy receded to the edges of her mind. Well, she could tease him a little bit too. She shifted her weight to one foot and put a hand on her waist in a way that emphasized the contour of her hip. "Oh, is that the only reason you invited me here?"

Sandor looked down at her, his eyes tracing her curves. Both of his hands were gripping the raw bird, and he appeared to regret that fact. "Hmph. Maybe you aren't completely helpless after all," he admitted begrudgingly.

Sansa reveled in the wave of power that flooded through her when he looked at her like that; it even washed away the shame she felt for having played the tart for a moment. She smiled as she sidestepped Sandor's bulk to access the sink. After she washed her hands, she asked, "Alright, what do you want me to do?"

"Peel that onion and scrub the carrots and potatoes with that brush while the oven gets hot." He nodded toward a funny little plastic square with short stubby bristles that was set out on another cutting board. "Then start chopping everything up. While you're doing that I'll show you how to prep the bird."

Sansa did as she was told, watching what Sandor was doing in between slices. He explained how to season and stuff the inside of the chicken with herbs and salt, and demonstrated how to arrange the limbs on the pan so that the bird wouldn't dry out. When she was finished chopping, he tucked the vegetables she had cut up around the sides of the meat, shoved the whole thing in the oven, and set a timer.

Sansa couldn't believe how quickly they had put dinner together, and how easy he had made it all look, and she told him so. He rolled his eyes, but she thought she noticed him standing a little straighter.

And, even though Sandor had done most of the work and all of the directing, Sansa also felt proud and accomplished. Jeyne, who lorded over the whole apartment the fact that she could make scrambled eggs, would be ever so surprised when Sansa reproduced this feast sometime. Just imagining the sour look on her roommate's face made Sansa smile.

Giddy with self-assuredness, she hopped up onto the countertop, crossing her legs coyly. It was probably impertinent to do so, but Sandor did not seem to be the type to fret over something like that. "Now what?" she asked.

"Now, wine," Sandor announced. He popped the cork out of a bottle and poured the drink into two mismatched tumblers, then handed one glass to Sansa and raised the other.

Sansa clinked her glass to his and took a sip of the dark liquid, then set it down. Margaery had once counseled against drinking red wine when spending time with a man, as it stained the teeth and tongue an unattractive purple, but Sansa didn't think that Sandor minded. The fact that he was suddenly standing so very close to her, with a rather serious expression on his face, confirmed her suspicion.

Sandor leaned his hip against the counter. There was a mere hair's breadth between his waist and her crossed knees. "We have an hour," Sandor said quietly. The room suddenly seemed very quiet except for his breathing and hers.

"Is that so," Sansa said, her voice coming out in a whisper. The oven fan whirred on and it sounded like a jet engine roaring through the kitchen.

Very slowly Sandor drew his hands to her shoulders and ran his fingertips down the length of her arms, raising goosebumps in their wake. He stared into her eyes as his fingers just barely curled around her palms for what seemed like a very long time.

"May I kiss you again?" he finally asked, his voice a scrape of rusted steel on cement.

Sansa swallowed and nodded. Her mouth and throat felt quite dry in spite of the wine.

She closed her eyes in preparation for another hard kiss like the first one he had given her, but instead she felt him shift his hip against the outside of her knee and graze his large hand across her abdomen. He grasped the curve of her waist, beckoning her closer, and stroked his other hand against her cheek. She was sitting a bit awkwardly, twisting around with the side of her leg squished up against him, but she didn't have time to reposition before he leaned forward.

Then his rough scarred lips were on hers, and when she opened her mouth things got a little messy like before, but still nice. Sansa wrapped her arms around his neck and arched into his embrace, enjoying the way he tasted and the scratch of his beard on her chin. Sandor was quite different in all ways from any other man she had done this with, and his attentions thrilled her in an entirrly new way.

Eventually Sandor moved his hand down from her waist, to her hip and then onto her thigh where her shorts ended. He broke away and exhaled heavily. "I still can't believe you're here, doing this, with me," he rasped, and it wasn't entirely clear to Sansa whether he was pleased or vexed about it.

"Why ever not?" she asked as she opened her eyes. What she saw gave her a clue. His scars appeared much more alarming under the harsh overhead lighting than they had looked in the dim streetlamp the other night. Certainly, she had seen them all afternoon, but not mere inches from her face like this. Now his scars looked truly frightful, and she had no illusions about what her friends would say about them. She tilted her forehead against his and gazed down, hoping Sandor couldn't deduce her unkind thoughts and feeling ashamed for even thinking them in the first place.

But even his ruined flesh had not dampened her enjoyment of getting to know him. Truthfully, she really liked spending time with him. And she really, really liked kissing him, which she thought she was making quite obvious.

Sandor smoothed his thumb along the hem of her shorts, which sent a shiver down her spine. "You know why. Don't make me say it," he whispered into her ear.

A thread of sorrow entwined Sansa's heart. Poor Sandor. Even in the middle of a makeout session, he still doubted her interest in him. She looked back up at him, careful to keep her expression neutral as she caught sight of the scarred side of his face. "I like you," she pronounced slowly, and took a deep breath to keep going, "and I like doing . . . this . . . with you," she finished, averting her eyes. She couldn't keep looking at him when she said _that_.

"Then keep going," he hissed, and gave her a long, deep kiss.

She enjoyed his renewed fervor, but her back was starting to hurt with this unnatural torsion. This time she broke the kiss and twisted away. "Just a moment, I need to move," she said, rubbing the crick in her neck.

Sandor shifted back a bit to give Sansa some room but did not remove his hand from her thigh. She gazed down at his fingers on her pale skin, her mind forming some interesting images.

And then, without entirely processing what she was doing, Sansa ever so slowly uncrossed her legs and bumped one knee up against Sandor's hip, and let it travel further along the counter's edge when he backed up slightly. She brushed the traveling knee against his waist as she kept moving it, and finally rested it on the other side of him. Shutting out the voices of doubt and dismay in her mind, she scooted her bottom over and hooked one leg around Sandor's back while she let the other rub up against his waist on the other side. She draped her arms around his neck again and gazed up at him through half-lidded eyes. Half of her brain was berating her for her forwardness, and the other half was saying triumphantly, _I don't seem so helpless now, do I?_

Sandor swallowed audibly. "Bloody hell, Sansa," he choked out. A moment later, he grabbed both of her hips hard and ground her whole body against him and kissed her so hard that the back of her head clunked the kitchen cupboard, and somewhere in the back of her mind she registered the fact that this was the first time she'd heard Sandor use her name.

The oven timer beeped.

Sandor spat out the longest, foulest stream of curses that Sansa had ever heard. But when Sansa started laughing, he gave her a half-smile and planted a quick kiss on the forehead, then turned around to take the chicken out.

Sansa smiled and slipped off the countertop, feeling nearly vertiginous as her feet touched the floor. "I'll set the table," she offered, and found some plates and utensils in the cabinets.

A few minutes and a few more curses from Sandor later, the two of them sat down to steaming plates heaped with delicious, savory smelling foods. Sansa realized that she was incredibly hungry and wanted more than anything to eat. "This smells incredible," she said, and lifted her fork and knife.

"It had better fucking be, to interrupt something that good," he groused, but he tore into a drumstick like a starving man.

Sansa did her best to eat daintily, but even she found herself wolfing down her dinner. They barely even spoke and between the two of them, they ate nearly everything they had prepared.

After they polished off the bottle of wine, Sansa cleared the plates from the table, put away the leftovers, and started washing the roasting pan while Sandor slumped lazily in his dining chair. She could feel his eyes on her backside while she stood at the sink, but all the food and wine seemed to have dialed back his lust to a low thrum in the background, rather than the desperate overpowering beat from earlier. She glanced at the clock on the coffeemaker and started when she saw how late it was.

Sansa turned around and wiped her hands on the stained towel slung through the oven door handle. Sandor beckoned her over. She went to him and stood between his knees. He took one of her hands in his own and brought it to his lips.

Sansa ran her fingers through her hair. The evening had been exciting but a little overwhelming, and she needed to get home. "It's late, and you must be tired."

Sandor snorted. "You mean I am an old dog and I can't keep up with a young little she-wolf like you."

"No," she corrected pleasantly, and allowed him to draw her down on his thigh and wrap an arm around her waist. "I know you have to work tomorrow, so I will go home and let you get some sleep." She gave him a long, warm kiss. "Thank you for the lovely day today."

He patted her bottom, more affectionately than passionately. "Alright, off with you, then," he grumbled as if annoyed, but Sansa could tell that he was ready for the evening to end as well. She stood up again, grabbed her purse off the couch, and headed toward the door.

"Might you have time to see me again this week?" Sansa asked as she stood in his doorway, keys in hand.

The unburnt corner of Sandor's mouth turned up. "Little bird, I have as much time for you as you are willing to give me."

Sandor jerked upright in his bed, having been bolted from a deep, calm sleep. Something was wrong. His dark room was eerily quiet. Had the power on the whole block gone out? Had he suddenly lost his hearing?

No. It was Cersei. She hadn't said a word since Sansa had first kissed him.

Sandor grinned alone in the darkness, suddenly understanding how beautiful silence could sound.


	6. Chapter 6

Risk Assessment - Ch 6

by SharkAria

A/N: I update this more regularly over at AO3. If you absolutely can't wait to read more, check it out there!

* * *

On Monday night, Sansa and Sandor went out to the movies. They caught a popular fantasy feature with elegant princesses and beautiful costumes that Sansa appreciated and graphic violence and giant dragons that Sandor seemed to enjoy. During a particularly bloody battle scene, Sansa squeezed her eyes shut and hid her face against Sandor's shoulder. During an especially graphic sex scene, Sandor conspicuously and awkwardly removed his arm from around Sansa's shoulders. But much to Sansa's relief, Sandor's discomfort all but evaporated by the time the film ended and he dropped her off out front of her apartment. He gave her a goodnight kiss with so much heat that her knees were rendered completely gelatinous, a fact that became evident when she attempted to hop out of the Bronco afterwards and nearly faceplanted on the sidewalk.

On Tuesday afternoon, Sansa met Sandor at The Keep for Happy Hour. They sat at a booth and split a pitcher of beer, and Sansa found herself frequently grazing her fingertips against the back of Sandor's hand and brushing her ankle against Sandor's calf. Sandor rolled up his shirtsleeves and complained about his "incompetent" colleagues and "clueless" supervisor at work, and he occasionally raised an eyebrow at Sansa's lingering touches. Sansa related her own employment travails good-naturedly, and she gasped, scandalized, as Sandor finally reached down and trapped her traipsing foot in his giant hand and smirked wickedly at her. When Sansa had to leave to meet up with some friends at a restaurant, Sandor walked her to her car and loomed over her and flattened her back against the driver's side window, and he pressed his lips to hers in such a way that made her seriously regret having to follow through with her dinner plans.

On Wednesday, Sansa took Sandor up on his invitation to come over and watch the season premiere of a TV show they both liked. As she stood outside of his place, her whole body buzzed with anticipation to finally spend time with him in private once again. She wasn't sure exactly just how far she was ready to go with him next - she had only met him a month or so ago, after all - but she knew that she couldn't take any more of his promise-filled goodnight kisses without finding out a little more about just what it was that they hinted at. She smoothed her fitted cotton shirt over the waistline of her cropped jeans, delighted that soon she would be in Sandor's arms again.

Sansa was deeply and painfully disappointed, therefore, when she let herself into the apartment only to find a grouchy, distracted Sandor who greeted her by growling, "My shit-for-brains supervisor is sending me out of town tonight to some pointless fucking industry conference, the worthless cuntface."

He stalked out of the living room and into the hallway that led to his bedroom. "Help yourself to a beer in the fridge," he called over his shoulder. "I have to finish packing." He grumbled a few more curses that Sansa didn't catch and began banging stuff around in his room.

Sansa stood in the doorway, her excitement washed away in a flood of frustration. Listening to Sandor gripe and watching him throw clothes into a suitcase was not how she had envisioned spending this evening. Sighing in resignation, she tossed her purse onto his couch and followed the sound of loud crashes to the back of the apartment.

Sandor's bedroom was surprisingly large, although just as spare as the rest of his place, with a king-sized bed in the middle of the room. A duffel bag sat half-packed on the bedspread, with folded and rolled clothes laid out in front of it. An unzipped hang-up bag dangled from the closet door, revealing to Sansa a huge, poorly tailored cheap black suit and several white polyester work shirts.

She was pleased to see that Sandor had carefully hung the grey and white tie she had given him alongside the other work clothes he was taking, although it made the rest of his business attire look even shabbier by comparison. Her pleasure at seeing that he was using her gift helped reduce the annoyance threading through her voice as she asked, "How long will you be gone?"

"Three nights total," he spat out, as though he were clearing phlegm from the back of his throat. "I'm taking the train down the coast tonight so I can be there for the first panel in the morning." He stormed over to a beat-up dresser, yanked open a drawer and started rooting through a collection of dark socks.

For once, Sandor didn't seem to be completely captivated by Sansa's presence, being so deeply absorbed with his own aggravation. He tossed some of the socks over his shoulder onto the bed, and scratched his stomach. As he did so, a button popped off his shirt, causing another stream of curses to spew from his lips. Grousing all the while, he unbuttoned the rest of the garment and shrugged it to the floor, exposing a thin ribbed cotton undershirt stretched tight across his torso, and baring his arms and shoulders.

Sansa's eyes widened. She knew Sandor was brawny, of course - she had felt his strength whenever he had pulled her against him - but she had never seen him in anything more revealing than a loose tee shirt. His muscles were enormous, practically absurd in the way they bulged as he moved around the room. His forearms and what she could see of his chest were obscenely hairy, like an image that might have appeared on an old movie poster depicting the terrible villain who intended to steal away the beautiful heroine. Sandor embodied an almost frightening hypermasculinity that Sansa found, much to her confusion, equal parts repulsive and attractive.

Sandor still wasn't paying much attention to her, which was just as well, because Sansa wasn't sure what he would have read from the expression on her face. He was mostly shuffling around his bedroom and grabbing clothes, muttering to himself about the ignominy of having to follow last-minute orders from his supervisor. As he shoved an oversized pair of athletic shoes into a special compartment of his bag, he grunted, "Stupid fucking conference. Not going to learn one bloody thing I don't already know. They only want to send a rep from Kingsguard so that our competition doesn't think we're slacking..."

Sansa wasn't really listening. She was staring at the taut tendons that stretched along Sandor's neck. As she watched him, he grumbled about the heat and pulled his long hair back into a messy ponytail that uncovered the scars along the side of his head. Sansa had never realized just how badly his ear had been mangled, and her stomach churned imagining all the ways that he might have received such horrifying scars.

Sandor glanced back at her with those grey eyes and an exasperated half smile, and Sansa's tongue felt thick and heavy. He sank onto the edge of the bed, which protested with a squeak of mattress springs. "You're quiet tonight, little bird. All my wretched complaining drowning out your chirping?"

Sansa blinked, shook her head. "Oh no, it's not that ..." She trailed off as she caught sight of the thick blue veins on his hands. She coughed self-consciously, hoping to cover the fact that she had been staring so rudely. "Um, It's just - you work out a lot, don't you?"

"Most days." Sandor shrugged, rolled his shoulders in such a way that emphasized the truth of the matter. He looked down as if noticing his muscles for the first time and curled his arm into a bicep that seemed to have the diameter of a dinner plate. "Can't let that desk job of mine turn me soft."

Sansa swallowed, unsure how to process what she was seeing and hearing. "It does not appear that you have anything to worry about. You look very - strong."

"I like to _be_ strong. Don't usually think much about the look of it."

"I like the look." Sansa started blushing before the words were completely out of her mouth. She furrowed her brow in worry. Sandor was so sensitive whenever she said anything about his appearance, so she usually avoided it altogether. Would he be angry? But the more Sansa gazed at him, the more she realized how true the sentiment was, and besides, Sandor needed to learn to take a compliment. He might not fit the ideal for physical attractiveness, but he had no need to do so. He was twice the size and four times as strong as most men.

There was a glint in Sandor's eye that hadn't been there a moment ago, or maybe it was just that his distracted irritation had finally burnt out. Sansa couldn't tell exactly, but whatever it was, she was pretty sure that it was not anger. He jerked his head to the side, beckoning her to him. She approached and a moment later she was standing between his knees, with one of his palms resting lightly on her hip.

Sandor grasped one of her hands in his free one and pressed it against his chest, splaying her fingers just above his heart. "You can do more than just look, you know," he suggested, low and quiet.

Sansa gave him a weak smile. So he definitely wasn't angry. She traced a finger along the wide neckline of his undershirt and felt Sandor's warm breath become shallow. Sansa could not stop staring at all his hair, which was so diametrically opposite to anything she had ever thought to find handsome. The image of a water polo player she had dated floated to the surface of her mind; the boy would shave his entire body to glide through the pool like a fish. Sansa - not to mention many other girls - had thought the boy's bare tan skin over his lithe long muscles had looked very appealing, but eventually the stubble would grow back and scratch Sansa when she touched him. As she remembered that boy from so long ago, Sansa slowly raked her fingernails down Sandor's chest, over the top of his shirt, nearly down to the hem at the waist of his pants. His stomach twitched at the contact.

"If you meant to get my attention, Sansa, know that you have it," Sandor breathed hoarsely. He pulled her close and trapped her hand between their bodies. Her knees bumped up against the insides of his thighs.

Sansa needed to see more. She took a fistful of the undershirt and pulled upward, slowly.

Sandor needed no more hint than that. He whipped the garment over his head, giving Sansa just a moment to take in his bare torso before grabbing her around the waist and flopping backward onto the mattress with her. Sansa shrieked in surprise and laughed, squirming in his embrace. Sandor hitched her up so her face was directly over his and cut her giggles off with a warm kiss. Her hair flew around both of them and got into their mouths. Sansa laughed again and felt Sandor's lips curl upward against hers. He spat out a lock of hair and smoothed it away from her face.

She was glad for the humor of the situation. It helped her mentally stall while she still tried to reason out how she felt about the fact that the upper half of her body was only separated from his by the thin cloth of her shirt, and the fact that she was straddling one of Sandor's massive thighs with her own leg snugly pressing against his groin.

"You don't play fair, little bird," Sandor rumbled, rolling his hip slowly and moving his hand so that it fell on the exposed skin of her lower back in the gap between the waistline of her pants and the hem of her shirt.

Really, the man could find a way to make everything sound like a complaint when he wanted to, Sansa thought a bit resentfully. "And what do you mean by that?" she sniffed.

"Here I am, half-naked beneath you and at your mercy, and you still have all your clothes on. Seems like we should even up the score." He caressed her back and she wasn't sure if he meant to imply that she should take off her shirt or her pants, or both. She hadn't been thinking about it like that, and suddenly Sansa felt very self-conscious. Certainly, she had dated enough young men to have been in this very situation many times before, but for some reason she had rarely taken any of her clothes off with the overhead lights on. Doing so struck her as somehow incorrect, or against the unspoken rules of a makeout session. But then Sandor had rarely shown much interest in doing much of anything in a conventional manner.

To avoid answering his request right away, Sansa gave him another long kiss. As Sandor opened his mouth to let her tongue in, he slipped his hand higher up under her shirt and rubbed at the hooks of her bra, but did not attempt to release them. Even with the thrill that shot up her spine at the contact, she felt grateful for his restraint.

Something niggled at the back of her mind. She looked up at the alarm clock on the nightstand. "Don't you have to leave soon?"

Sandor didn't check the time; he already knew. "Aye," he agreed, but the undertone of bitterness that Sansa had been expecting to hear was absent from his voice. Apparently a little messing around was enough to wipe away much of the angst he had been expressing earlier about his work duties. "But a quick taste of that pale stomach of yours would make the next three days more bearable."

Sansa felt the heat rising to her face. She had loved it when, on previous occasions, he had put his mouth on her neck, against her earlobe, along her collarbone. The very idea of his tongue grazing across her stomach pulled a thread of arousal down through her belly button, deep in her abdomen, overwhelming the lingering shyness she felt over exposing her body to him. She made her decision, rolled off Sandor and onto the piles of folded clothes, and waited for him to kiss her again.

Sandor must have misunderstood, because he looked away from her then, as though she had spurned his advance. It pained Sansa to see how quickly he always expected her to reject him. "Or we can forget I ever said anything," he huffed and propped himself up on his elbows, getting ready to sit up.

"No, that's not - here," Sansa interjected, and placed his hand flat on her stomach, under the fabric of her shirt, reminding herself not to roll her eyes. "You can, um -"

"Have a taste?" he grinned down at her, wasting no time in flipping the shirt over her head.

'Right, that," Sansa whispered and squeezed her eyes shut, feeling equal parts inflamed with desire and mortified beyond belief. The heat of her face had long since traveled down her neck and along her collarbones. Her whole body would be bright pink by the time Sandor was done looking at her.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and found Sandor looming over her, a few strands of his hair unloosened from his ponytail, hanging down over her face. His eyes were glued to the skin above her bra cup, and she wished suddenly that she had something cute and lacy to wear like Margaery did instead of this practical, skin-toned seamless undergarment.

Sandor didn't seem to mind, though; he leaned down to trace his finger along the edge of the fabric. When he made it to the space between her breasts, he tried to say her name, but it came out more like a strangled squawk.

Sansa's nerves bubbled over into an uncontrollable giggle at that. He glared at her for a moment, then leaned down and swiped his tongue across the curve of her belly. Her laughter twisted into a gasp, and she grabbed his shoulders instinctively as he nipped at her belly button.

"Serves you right for laughing, temptress," he growled against her stomach, and she chuckled again, albeit a register lower this time. Sandor lay his good ear against her ribcage, his beard tickling her skin, and his hand drifted to the fly of her jeans. He didn't try to unzip it, but he hooked his thumb under the top button, his fingernail catching on the edge of her panties, and Sansa thought she might melt into the mattress then and there. Or, at the very least, allow Sandor to do whatever it took to bring about her impending melting.

But instead of doing anything further, Sandor sat up on the bed and let out a defeated sigh. "I'm going to miss my train if I don't finish packing and get to the station."

Dazed, Sansa rolled her head to the side and met his eyes. "You don't even have a few more minutes?" Her cheeks flushed all over again as she realized how whiny it came out.

"Not even a few more minutes, little bird." Sandor traced a blue vein along her side with his finger. "Bloody hell, but you are beautiful," he rasped reverently, more to himself than to her.

Sansa blushed again, then sat up next to him and willed herself not to cross her arms over front. She had nothing to be ashamed of; obviously Sandor liked the way she looked, and she enjoyed the feeling of power that washed over her when he looked at her.

He reached over and smoothed her hair back into place with his broad palm. "Call me while I'm gone if you get lonely," he mumbled, clearly trying to sound casual about it, but hope was shot through his voice.

The corner of Sansa's mouth turned up. "Maybe I'll text you a picture," she teased as she pulled her shirt over her head, and glanced back at him coyly.

She swore that she could see, for the first time ever, a blush rise to Sandor's cheek.


	7. Chapter 7

Risk Assessment - Chapter 7

by SharkAria

The first day of the conference didn't turn out half as bad as Sandor had expected. In fact, he ended up kind of enjoying himself. He listened intently during the morning panel about industry trends, and he was surprised by how much he learned during the afternoon presentations that showcased all the latest actuarial software and new risk assessment technology. He caught up with a few of his old colleagues who had moved to other companies after Baratheon Lannister had dissolved, and he found out about Joffrey's latest attempt to appeal his conviction. The only scheduled events Sandor didn't like were the lunchtime breakout session where he huddled around a table with a 'workgroup' of strangers who stared curiously at his scars, and the unbearably tedious cocktail hour where he swatted away overly eager networkers.

Overall, Sandor found the day worthwhile and interesting. Attending the conference by himself was giving him a taste of what being his own boss might be like. He had never been much of one to plan for the future, whether for his career or in his personal life, but perhaps when he got back home, he would ask his supervisor for more responsibilities. And a raise. Definitely a raise.

As he capped off the evening with a weightlifting session in the hotel's meagerly provisioned workout room, Sandor found himself amazed to realize that he had been so absorbed by his tasks during the day that he had barely thought about Sansa at all. Sure, the image of her smooth bare torso had permanently seared itself into his mind the night before; certainly, whenever his focus drifted during the presentations, he started wondering about whether she would really send him a picture like she said she might. For the most part, however, he was relieved that he had been able to concentrate; it wouldn't have been very professional to walk around all day with his brain fogged over and his pants tented like some pathetic teenager.

But now that the day was winding to a close, Sandor was reminded of just how nearly impossible it had been to leave Sansa the previous night, with her lolling around half-clothed on his bed. The memory squelched his already flagging desire to try to wring a productive workout from the tiny gym. He finished up his last set of exercises and called it good, then wiped down the equipment and took elevator up to his room so that he could send Sansa some suggestive messages.

Sandor kicked off his athletic shoes and flopped onto the hard mattress of his big bed, still sweaty in his shorts and tee shirt. As he did so, his phone buzzed. When he picked it up, he was deeply relieved to see that Sansa had texted him first. It helped him get over the lingering weirdness he always felt about contacting her. Of course, if he had his way, he would have just call to hear her voice, but the girl seemed utterly incapable of actually _talking_ on the phone. It was yet another one of those awkward age gap things that he was only slowly coming to accept and dismiss as unimportant.

 _::How'd it go today?::_ Sansa's message flickered on the screen.

Sandor typed the first thing that came to mind. _::The hotel gym is shit, and the bar isn't much better.::_

 _::Sorry to hear that :( ::_ she responded almost instantaneously.

Sandor could never keep up with her texting speed. Between not having been raised since birth with cell phones like she had, his big thumbs, and his constant second-guessing about what he should say, it always took him three times as long to respond. But he thought he knew what she would want to hear tonight. _::The worst part is the lonely bed...::_ he typed and smirked, imagining Sansa's cheeks turning pink as she read the words.

When she didn't send anything back right away, Sandor wondered if he had come on too strong. He could never tell when he couldn't hear the inflection in her voice. _Fucking texting_ , he thought with irritation.

 _::I know what you mean::_ she finally replied. _::But I'm keeping myself busy, look!::_

Below the words was a picture of something that Sandor didn't recognize at first. He enlarged the image to full screen. It was a sewing machine, with some white fabric bunched under the needle and spread out along a table. Why was she still at work this late? The bridal shop should have closed hours ago. But then she had once told him that summer was the busiest season - not that Sandor would know, since he paid pretty much no attention whatsoever to weddings. _::Working on a dress?::_ he asked.

 _::Not for work. It's a surprise.::_ She finished off the text with more smiley faces than had ever graced the screen of his phone before.

Sandor rolled his eyes and chuckled even though Sansa wasn't there to see his reaction. He didn't care much for surprises, and in any case she'd let him know what it was soon enough. She was probably making herself some little outfit that she hoped Sandor would like, but she could have worn a burlap sack and he wouldn't have noticed. However, her pleasantness made him feel bold enough to ask for what he really wanted. _::A surprise would be a nice pic of you, little bird.::_

Again there was a long pause. Just as Sandor started to lose faith, his phone vibrated again.  
The picture showed Sansa from slightly above, with her hair pulled back and her lips curved in an uncertain half smile. She was wearing a pair of rimmed glasses - he hadn't known she needed them, and he liked them, a whole lot more than he ever would have thought - and some little strapped tank top thing that showed the swell of her breasts. He could almost hear her thinking, "God, I look so gross," but she knew well enough by now not to say something like that to him.

The image made Sandor's heart ache. It made other parts of him ache, too, thinking about Sansa hundreds of miles away, alone, choosing to spend her time texting him. But telling her that would definitely make her too nervous. Instead, he simply typed, _::Now my day is complete. Finish up your surprise, girl, and hurry on home.::_

They said their goodnights, and Sandor congratulated himself on finally starting to get the hang of this dating-a-beautiful-younger-woman thing. He shut off the bedside lamp, ready to fall asleep with Sansa's words floating through his content brain.

* * *

Sansa wiped a frizzled strand of hair away from her forehead as she leaned over the sewing machine in the stuffy back room of Baelish Bridal. She had arrived at work early at the request of her manager in order to do rush alterations on a gown for a bride who had crash-dieted her way through her engagement. The dress was made of delicate, difficult material, and the customer had been notoriously hard to please during her numerous fittings; Sansa did not look forward to being blamed for yet another less-than-perfect result.

Sansa wished she were working on the shirt she was making for Sandor. She had gotten his measurements from one of his cheaper shirts, which fit him quite well although nothing could make up for the poor quality of the fabric. She really wanted to finish it by the time he came back from the conference. Maybe she would have a few spare minutes on her lunch hour.

She had been nervous about making something for Sandor again, given his odd initial reaction to the gift of the tie, but things between them were more intimate now. And in truth, the main reason she had decided to make him another gift was because it was the only way she could keep herself focused on anything at all - her mind and body had been thrumming with an almost painful longing for his touch since they had parted two nights earlier. She had left his apartment and gone home and lain down in bed and tossed and turned all night, wishing for his lips on hers, wishing to be in his arms and arching over him again. The next night, when Sandor had texted her about his empty hotel bed, she had been able to think of nothing but the way his thumbnail had snagged against the the lace of her panties. And now that she was here at work, sweating over a sewing machine, she was starting to think of all the places on her body that he had not yet touched her, but where she hoped he would, and soon . . .

"Sansa, bring out the sleeveless organza on the pick-up rack," called Sansa's manager Reia, a curvy woman with a silver-streaked braid hanging down her back, from the front of the store. Sansa shook her head of the images of Sandor and hurried to pull the gown that she had altered earlier in the week, then brought it out to the sales desk.

The tall, short haired bride stood on the other side of the counter, clicking her nails on the smooth rich wood and calling attention to her enormous sapphire engagement ring. She smiled as Sansa came out with her dress and handed it to Alayaya, the beautiful dark-skinned junior saleswoman working the cash register. A lithe sandy-haired man stood behind his fiancee, beaming as she completed the purchase.

As they left, Sansa's manager sighed wistfully and gazed after the couple as they got into their car out on the street in front of the shop. "That groom was so handsome. A lot of women's hearts will break once he's married. He would have been just my type twenty years ago."

Alayaya smiled and glanced down at the diamond solitaire on her finger. "He was almost as good-looking as my fiance," she replied.

Sansa nodded in agreement politely. She thought the man had been too perfect looking - frankly, he was rather bland in comparison to Sandor's striking appearance - but she wasn't about to try to convince her coworkers about the surprising attractiveness of huge hairy muscles and disfiguring facial scars.

Alayaya smiled. "Sansa, are you dating anyone? Last week you met a boy after work for drinks, didn't you?"

 _A boy? Hardly,_ Sansa thought, imagining Sandor's beard scraping against her throat. "I've been seeing someone," she admitted. "Things with him are -" Sansa recalled Sandor's tongue swiping across her stomach - "quite promising."

"Oh, you'll be picking out your own gown soon enough," Reia pronounced with certainty, which Sansa thought was a bit presumptuous. "Be sure to bring your own handsome young man in here when you have a ring on your finger so we can all get a good look at him." She patted Sansa on the shoulder and walked across the sales floor to supervise another seamstress measuring a group of giggling bridesmaids for matching poofy purple gowns.

Sansa lingered at the counter, not quite ready to get back to the alterations she needed to finish in the back room. She tried to imagine Sandor as a groom and almost laughed aloud at the mental image. In her time working at the bridal shop, she'd certainly seen plenty of reluctant grooms, but she was certain that Sandor would be downright recalcitrant. She tried to envision him scrunched into a dainty chair next to her at a wedding planner's office, poring through binders of invitations, comparing table setting options, and tasting pretty little cake samples, and then she really did laugh aloud.

Sansa returned to the back room and sat down at her alterations again. Her mind wandered back to Sandor as a groom. As big as he was, he would have to get a custom suit, for sure. With enough time and fabric, Sansa could probably make him one; in college she'd often done menswear as final projects and she'd always gotten top marks for her work. But if she made a suit for him, she would have to give herself extra time to make her own dress too.

Sansa's entire face flushed red and she took her foot off the machine pedal, halting her sewing. What was she _thinking,_ imagining a wedding with a man she'd only been seeing for a month or so? She was enjoying herself with him, but they still barely knew one another. She didn't even know how he had gotten his scars.

Besides, Sandor wasn't even her boyfriend - at least, not officially. Sure, she wasn't seeing anyone else, and she was nearly certain that he wasn't, and they were spending a lot of time together, and the kinds of things they were doing when they were spending time together suggested that they were going in the direction of a relationship . . . but they hadn't talked about it.

She didn't want to ask Sandor. She wanted him to pursue her to make things official, the way things were supposed to be done in relationships. But neither did she want to wait much longer. She sighed and started up the sewing machine again, hoping that she would finish this project so that she could get back to work on Sandor's shirt. She would see him in a couple days and sort this all out - hopefully, a couple of days would be enough time to quell the new colony of fast fluttering butterflies that seemed to have suddenly taken residence in her stomach.

* * *

If the first day of the conference was good, the second was even better - and not only because Sandor would finally get to go home and see Sansa after a short meeting tomorrow morning. His confidence ran high as the final afternoon seminar ended, and he felt like he deserved to reward himself with a nice stiff drink.

The bar, situated directly off the hotel lobby, was festooned with outdated frosted glass, beveled mirrors, and a loud paisley patterned carpet, but it served Dornish Sour, so it was good enough for Sandor. He lurched onto a barstool and ordered his favorite. The bartender slid his order over to him and he took a long quaff from the glass.

From his vantage point at the bar, Sandor observed a gaggle of thirtysomething women wearing conference badges flock in and commandeer a tall table nearby. Several of the women looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps they were more refugees from Baratheon Lannister. Sandor took another swig from his drink and thought for the thousandth time how glad he was that he had escaped from that hellhole of a job.

Sandor's phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out, hoping for another text from Sansa, but it was just an emailed bank statement, reminding him again that he needed to ask for a salary increase when he got back to work on Monday. As he popped the phone back into his pocket, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to see one of the women from the tall table standing behind him. She had short dark hair and red fingernails that matched her lipstick, and teasing brown eyes that sparked an ugly memory in Sandor's mind.

"Sandor Clegane," the woman purred. Her bracelet jangled as she ran her fingers through her bobbed hair. "My former colleague. We spent some time together once, remember?"

Sandor looked at the woman's face, down her curves. He remembered everything with appalling clarity. The woman was named Nera, and she had worked in HR at Baratheon Lannister. Her specialty had been quashing employee complaints against Joffrey without reputation-tarnishing lawsuits being filed against the company. Nera had been making eyes at Sandor for a few weeks, which Sandor had been studiously avoiding, having recently been burned by the gambling addict who had thrown him over for a good looking man. But then, at some stupid drunken company function where Sandor had been tossing back shot after shot to deaden his rage at his employers, Nera had sauntered up from somewhere in the shadows and had grabbed his hand, leading him past a cackling, high-as-a-kite Joffrey and a drunk, pouting Cersei, into a quiet hallway. She had pulled him into the service elevator and unzipped his fly with a raspy chuckle, whispering to him that a man as big as him just had to have something worthwhile in his pants. Sandor had barely been able to stand up straight, but it had been awhile since he had been with the customer service rep, so even with all the alcohol he had still been able to take her there right up against the safety rail. After Nera finished with him, she had given him a long wet kiss, then left him alone and disheveled to return to the party.

Sandor had liked Nera's teasing dark eyes and her low voice in his ear, and he had hoped that she might have enjoyed what they had done together enough to overlook his face. But a few days later, as he'd approached her cubicle to invite her out, he had overheard the vile bitch joking about his ugliness with the other HR harpies. "If it weren't for the size of his - well, you know - I don't think I could have gone through with it at all!" she had shrieked, and the other gossipmongers had all tittered. Sandor had retreated back to his own floor without her ever having known he had come to see her, and that evening he had bashed the punching bag at the gym so hard that it had broken open like a pinata.

In short, other than maybe the ghost of Cersei, she was just about the last woman Sandor ever wanted to see again.

Nera brushed her pointed fingernail down the sleeve of Sandor's black blazer. "We had some fun together once. Maybe we could relive old times."

Sandor gave the woman a sneer and clenched his glass in his fist until his knuckles turned pale. He bit his tongue and struggled to keep the old anger from sizzling up.

Nera must have been expecting him to act like the same old desperate dog he once was. Her flirty smile faded as she said, "Don't you remember?"

A few years ago, Sandor might have thrown the glass across the room, or stood up and loomed over her threateningly. But that was when the inside of him was as dark and as ugly as the outside still was, and he had grown much since then. There was a way to get his revenge without resorting to intimidation. "I don't remember much, except for that itchy rash you gave me," he growled loudly enough for her companions and most of the bar patrons to hear. Nera's eyes widened in shock, and her mouth dropped open.

Sandor poured the rest of his drink down his throat and stood up, hoping that he'd at least ruined the woman's chances with any other poor sucker at the conference. As he started walking away, Nera's throaty voice carried across the room. "I only slept with him because I felt sorry for him and that hideous face," she called, and her friends laughed, just like before. Her nasty words hit Sandor like a rotten egg sliding down the collar of his shirt.

Sandor stormed out of the bar and stumbled into the elevator lobby. He hurled himself into one of the cars and jabbed the button for his floor and slumped back against the mirrored wall. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard the echo of Cersei's laughter, but he clamped a tight lid on that before the dead woman's disparaging comments could spiral back into his life.

Sandor wanted see Sansa, hear her pretty reassuring voice, but Nera's words had planted a seed of doubt in his mind. Sansa didn't just feel sorry for him, did she?

The elevator spat him out on his floor, and soon he was in his room again, kicking off his shoes and pulling off his wrinkled suit and leaving it all in a heap by the bedside. He lay down on the bed in his boxers and his undershirt and tried not to think about anything at all. He stared at the popcorn ceiling until his eyes watered.

His phone vibrated, and he let it sit there on the bedside table. As much as he wanted to talk to Sansa, he didn't much feel like doing the mental gymnastics that texting her always seemed to require. But then the phone vibrated again, and then once more, and he worried that maybe something was wrong.

 _::Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!_ Sansa's message read.

And then, _::That is, if you want to hang out.::_

And finally, _::Sorry if I'm bugging you. I know you're working.::_

 _Silly girl,_ Sandor thought with affection in spite of the lingering pain from the incident in the bar. He hit the call button, and when she answered, he said, "My fingers are too big for all this bloody texting, little bird. If you want to talk to me while I'm away, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way."

Sansa laughed. "Let me put in my earphones so I can sew while we talk." He heard the whir of the needle in the background.

"Still working late again?" he muttered as he stuck a finger into a wool sock to pull it off. Sandor reached up and turned off the light by the bed, enjoying hearing Sansa in the darkness.

"Still working on that surprise," she replied, and the sewing machine started up again. "Well, you called me, what do you want to talk about?"

"You texted _me_ ," Sandor protested. "What do _you_ want to talk about?"

The machine stopped, and Sansa breathed into the mouthpiece. "Texting is different," she said, and chuckled pleasantly.

Sandor groaned. He didn't want to feel awkward, not right now, not after the evening he had had. Maybe he should just make plans to see Sansa in person, where it seemed a little easier to interact with her.

But just as he was opening his mouth to try and put an end to the conversation, Sansa asked quietly, "Why do you call me 'little bird'?"

Sandor scratched his head. He hadn't been expecting her to ask that. In fact, he hardly thought at all about the nickname that he used for her. It just seemed to fit her. "Well, that's what you are, isn't it? You're so small and graceful and fragile," he muttered, feeling self-conscious. "And sometimes you chirp pretty little things that you think other people want to hear."

Sansa made a click in the back of her throat. Sandor imagined her face, her lips tilting downward in annoyance.

"Do you deny it?" Sandor pressed.

The machine came on again, although this time it sounded far away. "It's better to bring joy than pain," Sansa said quietly.

"So long as it isn't a lie." Sandor's words came out gruffer than he intended. _Well, fuck. Just can't say anything right tonight,_ he thought angrily.

Sansa sighed and her breath came garbled through the earpiece. He had probably made her upset, and she would probably just want to hang up soon, and then maybe she wouldn't even want to see him tomorrow after all. But then she said something else that he hadn't been expecting. "Sandor, on our first - um, date - you asked me if I wanted to know about your scars."

Sandor ran his tongue across his teeth, tasting the last of the wine on his gums, wishing he had a whole bottle here in his room. "Is that what you'd have me talk about right now?" he rasped, unsure whether he wanted her to say yes or no.

"I just - I thought that since we're - you know, getting to know one another better -"

"It was my brother."

The sewing machine stopped, and Sandor heard Sansa suck in her breath. "Your -"

"Yes, my own family. Do you follow sports? Boxing?"

"Not really . . ." Sansa trailed off, clearly confused about the crazy bouncing around of the conversation.

Sandor imagined her trying to work out what boxing had to do with anything. "My brother was Gregor Clegane. You might have heard of him."

She gasped again. "Didn't he - didn't he kill someone in the ring?"

"Three people, actually. But he was making so many people so much money that they chalked the first two deaths up to the violence of the sport. They finally kicked him out of the sport after the third opponent died. Though they locked him in prison for the doping, not the killing." Sandor ground his teeth and rubbed his hand along his scars, feeling little but remembering the searing burns as though they had happened yesterday.

He was suddenly grateful that Sansa wasn't in the room with him, that he would not need to see the horror on her face when he related the next part. "Gregor was a teenager when they scheduled him for his first professional match. I was still a young boy." Then he told her about the toy, the fireplace, the lies his father told so that Gregor wouldn't be arrested. "I never figured out whether Father was greedy for the money, or scared of what Gregor would do to him if he reported him. Doesn't matter anymore though," Sandor muttered flatly. "They're all dead now."

Silence stretched out on the other end of the line. He had never told anyone before, had always kept his father's terrible secret, and now that he had let it all out into the world, and now that Sansa could not seem to think of anything to say, Sandor wasn't sure if it had been the right decision. After what felt like several minutes, Sandor finally asked, "You still there, little bird?"

Sansa inhaled sharply, obviously stifling a sob. "Oh, Sandor," she said, her voice wavering.

"Save your tears, girl," he replied gently. "Things are a lot better now that they're all out of my life." _And now that you are in it,_ he thought. _If you still want to be, now that you know my secret._


	8. Chapter 8

Risk Assessment - Ch 8

by SharkAria

"Eep!" Sansa yelped. She pulled her finger away from the steaming hot collar of Sandor's newly completed shirt and grimaced at the pale blister that bubbled up next to her nail. She supposed that's what she got for trying to rush a job that should be done carefully, such as ironing fine cotton. It didn't help that she was so distracted thinking about all that Sandor had told her, and that she was trying to keep an eye out for her manager. Generally speaking, she avoided working on personal projects in the middle of the workday, but she would be seeing Sandor in just a couple hours and she sorely wanted to give him his gift. It was the only part of seeing him again that she felt confident about; she certainly didn't have the slightest idea of what she would _say_ to him.

The previous night's phone call had been a revelation for Sansa. Of course she had been horrified when Sandor revealed how he had received his scars, but then he told her so much more that she found nearly as distressing. Once she'd gotten him talking, it seemed that he couldn't stop until he had poured out all the ways in which his ruined face had sculpted his life. He told her about his old job at the commercial insurer, where an unbalanced, vicious young executive named Joffrey had promoted him from a mailroom clerk to a well-paid underwriter as a joke. Sandor related how shocked Joffrey and the other employees had been when he proved himself to be a prodigy at assessing risk; he described how he made truckloads of money for the company by intimidating major clients into accepting risky and expensive policy contracts, and he explained with shame curdling his voice how much he came to enjoy using his frightening scars to feel powerful for the first time in his life, instead of feeling pitied and scorned. He raggedly described the humiliation he had suffered under Joffrey's alcoholic, power-hungry mother, who sat on the Board of Directors and eventually fixed a vote to install Joffrey as the company's CEO; who would slander Sandor's appearance with one breath and try to convince him to help her son sabotage competitors with the next. He spoke of how the woman was constantly shaking down claimants, involving clients in illegal investment schemes, and covering up the misdeeds of her son. With clear relief in his tone, Sandor told Sansa how both Joffrey and his mother were dead, or maybe he said that they were both in prison. By that point in the night, Sansa was having a hard time keeping everything straight, since Sandor's words had become so garbled that she could barely understand what he was saying.

Finally Sandor told Sansa how he came to Kingsguard Insurance in desperate need of a way to escape the life he'd been living, with the desire to be left alone to perform an honest job and the hope of atoning for the foul things he had done earlier in his career. He told her that nowadays he didn't like to meet new people because he hated it when they stared at him with fear, or contempt, or even worse, when they refused to meet his eyes; he told Sansa how much he loved that she didn't look at him in those ways anymore. He told her that he had never told anyone any of this before and he didn't know why he was telling it to her now.

Sansa had barely gotten a word in edgewise. But it didn't matter much, since she didn't have the slightest idea how to respond.

In some ways, Sansa felt closer to Sandor than ever before because of the incredible amount of trust he had heaped upon her. In other ways, she felt as though she was further away from Sandor than she could even have imagined. She had been so unbearably naive about who he had been and how he had become who he was now, and what was worse, she was coming to realize that she might be deeply ignorant of so much else about life in general.

Before she met Sandor, Sansa's world always made such perfect sense. She had felt with a deep, calming certainty that everyone got out of life what he or she put into it, and that everything would fall into place through hard work and kindness. With a single conversation, Sandor had obliterated that worldview. Sansa had tried to tell him that, and he had laughed, bitterly, and said that she had a lot of growing to do. His comment had made her uneasy and had bruised her confidence in what she had thought she had built up with him. Did Sandor think she was just a stupid little girl whose luck and looks had shielded her from the ugly parts of life? She hoped not.

Sansa turned her attention back to the new custom shirt she had made for Sandor, all freshly starched and fully pressed, then put it on a hanger and sheathed it in clingy protective plastic. It would be the finest piece by far in Sandor's wardrobe - though admittedly that wasn't a lofty goal to reach - but even apart from that, Sansa had to acknowledge that she'd done a top notch job. She had started on the shirt gift to keep herself occupied while he was away, but now it meant more: it was an offering to show him that she cared even though she didn't totally understand his life; it was a promise that she would try to get to know him better. Hopefully, the well-made gift would convey what she feared to articulate.

The curtain separating the front of the shop from the back room swished. Before Sansa even had time to turn to see who had come in, she heard a familiar voice address her. "Ah, Sansa. It's always a pleasure to catch you on shift."

"It's a pleasure to see you, Mr. Baelish," Sansa replied, cringing as she turned around and faked a smile. Why couldn't her boss show up when some bride was complimenting her precise alterations or intricate custom beadwork? She knew it would be futile to hope that he wouldn't notice Sandor's shirt hanging on the rack behind her, but maybe - hopefully - he would think it was just a customer's request.

Petyr wore a grey wool suit that made him look more like a politician than a small business owner. In some ways he was, since he owned or invested in most of the bridal shops in town, had a controlling interest in a dozen catering operations, and had convinced the City Council to rezone several parcels of property to accommodate weddings. He paid special attention to Baelish Bridal though, since it was his flagship store. "You're so very pleasant to everyone, Sansa, but your value to me lies in the delicate and expensive and _timely_ work that you complete for my customers."

He said this to Sansa often. Usually, it sounded like a compliment. Today it sounded suspiciously like a threat. "Thank you, Mr. Baelish," she responded, willing herself not to appear nervous.

He took another step into the room, and stood close enough to her that she could smell his costly cologne. Even though he stood shorter than she did, his presence made it feel as though he were looming over her. "I hired you straight out of college because of all the promise you showed," he stated as he stroked his pointed goatee. "In many ways, over these last couple years you have come through on that promise."

"You're too kind," Sansa hedged. His tone had a sharp edge that chilled her.

"Clearly I must be. I'm sorry to tell you that I've been receiving troubling reports from your colleagues here at the shop," he replied, his straight little teeth glinting as he smiled coldly, not looking very sorry at all. He tilted his head toward Sandor's shirt, and Sansa's face flushed. "I had hoped that they were mistaken, but I see that they spoke true. Unless an incredibly large bride with a rather unconventional wedding requested that garment, I have to assume that you have been doing a project that is not directly related to your employment."

Sansa swallowed and licked her lips. Her mouth felt dry and her palms felt hot and sweaty. _So much for not looking nervous,_ she thought with despair.

"Sansa, sweetling, we really must discuss how you've been spending your work hours."

* * *

Had the afternoon sunlight in King's Landing always been so painfully bright? Sandor was certain that it was worse than usual. As he drove up the highway away from the train station, his head pounded from the variety of sample-sized liquors he had used to wash down his phone call with Sansa the night before. All that talking and remembering had exhausted him, but it had also made sleep impossible, and the only things available to combat the insomnia were the bottles in the hotel room's minibar. He thought he had long ago broken the reliance on booze to deaden his senses, but the sad recitation of the misdeeds of Gregor and Joffrey and Cersei had dredged up some of the more shameful pieces of the wreckage from Sandor's old life.

For that, at least, he welcomed the pain thrumming through his skull and the sour knots in his stomach. Every throb at his temples reminded him that he had absolutely no wish to go back to living that way. Every twist of his guts reminded him how much he wanted to make progress with his fledgling plans for career advancement and maybe, possibly, even some kind of future with Sansa.

Sandor had shocked himself when he had told her every last unhappy detail of his life, but doing so had been an incomparable relief to him. He had worked so hard trying and failing to forget those years, but it had only been quite recently, after he had spent some time with Sansa, that he had begun to feel as though he could truly move forward. Now the girl knew all that there was to know, and she would have been well within his expectations to tell him she needed some time to process everything; instead, she had begged him to come over to her place as soon as he got back into town. He had agreed readily, though now that he was nearly to her apartment building he wished that he would have given himself the time to take a shower and change out of his suit. At least he was wearing the tie she had given him. He had a feeling that she'd like that.

Sandor pulled up to Sansa's tall building and slammed the Bronco into an uncomfortably narrow parallel spot on the street. The drivers of the cars in front and back of him might not be happy with his parking job, but that was what bumpers were for.

He had picked up Sansa at her place a few times, but he had never gone up to her apartment. She had always begged off, what with the lack of a parking lot and the nosy roommates, but now that he was here he had to admit to himself that he was quite curious to see where she lived. Between the location and the architecture, Sandor figured that either Sansa had twenty roommates packed into this flat of hers, or her parents were still contributing to her rent in this fancy building. Jealousy twinged in his breast as he remembered the first dump he had stayed in after Gregor had kicked him out of the house. He shook off the memory and concentrated on the happiness he had begun to build in his own life.

Sandor strode up the sidewalk and ignored the doorman's wide eyes as he stepped through the gilded entrance, then climbed the three flights of stairs as Sansa had instructed. Soon he stood in a nicely appointed, recently updated interior hallway facing her door. He raised his fist to knock, but before he could do so the door swung open. He started to grin but faltered as he caught sight of Sansa. She stood red eyed before him, still wearing the black blazer and skirt of the bridal shop uniform that she so despised, with dark gunky makeup streaking down her cheeks.

"What's wrong?" he barked as she threw herself into his arms.

She sobbed, and a smear of the black stuff on her face smudged against his shirt. "Oh, Sandor," she wailed. "I've been fired!"

Sandor perched uncomfortably on the edge of the bedspread, one arm awkwardly wrapped around the shaking shoulders of the sniffling Sansa. As soon as he'd sat down, his headache had roared back and now he longed to rub his temples, but he thought better of it as more noisy sobs wracked the girl's body.

Wanting to let Sansa relax a bit before he started questioning her, Sandor took a look around her room. Overall, it was less girly than Sandor had envisioned; he hadn't known what to expect exactly, though for some reason he had imagined a lot of pink. The double bed had a simple lacey white comforter and far fewer pillows than he assumed was typical of young women's bedrooms. Sheer pale curtains fluttered in front of an open window that looked out onto a sparkling pool. A blue and grey and green Myrish-looking carpet covered a hardwood floor. The rug couldn't possibly be the real thing, as that would have cost a fortune, but it was a decent reproduction. On one wall, Sansa had hung lots of framed pictures of smiling redheaded kids and dark-featured teenagers and a middle-aged couple that could only be her parents. To the other walls she had carefully tacked some watercolors of winter scenes. On a small desk in the corner was a slim laptop and a couple thick candles, which Sandor was relieved to see were unlit as he was certain that their scent would have triggered his gag reflex with the dregs of his hangover. Next to the bathroom door was an open closet where shoes of all kinds of heights and colors and textures were stored, every pair of which looked extremely uncomfortable and impractical to Sandor.

After a few minutes of inconsolable sobbing, Sansa scrubbed her cheeks with the handkerchief that Sandor offered. "I'm so sorry. I didn't want to put this on you. Last night, before I knew what would happen at work, I was going to see if you wanted to talk more about what you told me -"

Sandor rubbed her forearm with his fingers. "Bugger that," he muttered. "I've already told everything of my sorry story. I'm glad you know about it, but I've no need to cover that ground again so don't start making yourself feel guilty." He brushed a sticky length of hair away from her face. "Now tell me what happened today. Why did you get fired?"

Sansa sniffled again and returned his sopping wet handkerchief. He tucked it into his pocket quickly, noting to himself that must be in deep with Sansa if he was willing to touch her snot.

Fortunately, she didn't seem to notice Sandor's distaste. She lay her head against his shoulder as she explained wearily, "My boss showed up just as I was finishing a personal project. He told me that he had heard about several of his employees working on their own pieces on the clock, and he needed to make an example out someone. Apparently that someone was me." She looked as though she wanted to say more, but then a new round of tears flowed from her eyes. "What am I going to do, Sandor? Petyr owns nearly all the bridal shops in town. Nobody is going to hire me!"

Sandor groaned out of pity. Sansa's "personal project" could only be that surprise that she had been so excited to show him, and she should have known better than to risk her job for it. Firing and blackballing an employee over might have been an overly harsh response to what sounded like a minor infraction, but Sandor didn't see a way around it, not when Sansa was guilty of the offense by her own admission. He didn't know what to say, so instead he slid his arm down her back and around her waist and pulled her into his lap.

Sansa tucked her head under his chin, the strands of her hair getting caught in the bristles of his beard. She picked distractedly at one of the buttons on his shirt. "Sandor, it's not fair. If everyone else was doing the same thing, why did I have to be the one to get fired for it?"

Sandor exhaled and kissed her forehead. "Because you got caught." He felt bad for Sansa, but he was also annoyed that she had been so cavalier about something as important as her job. He tried to calm down by reminding himself that he had done much worse things early in his career, and somehow he had picked himself back up.

Sansa finally seemed to have gotten herself under control again when she said, "Well, I might as well show you what I was working on." She rose and walked over to the closet. "At least Petyr allowed me to take it home with me." She pulled a man's white work shirt wrapped in a clear dry cleaning bag off the rack, then held it up and gave Sandor a watery smile.

For a moment Sandor was confused; he had assumed she had been working on an outfit for herself. But as he looked at the size and style of the garment, dark understanding dawned on him. His skull suddenly felt as though it was splitting in two, no longer so much from the hangover as from his building anger. "You got canned because you were making _that_ for _me_?" he muttered. He finally gave in to rubbing his temples as he had wanted to do earlier and ground his teeth together, feeling overwhelmed with frustration toward Sansa. "Why would you risk your whole future for something so stupid?" he growled, knowing even as the words came out of his mouth that they sounded very cruel.

Sansa's face crumpled, her lower lip trembling and her eyes shining with yet more new tears. "I only worked on it on my break or off the clock except for today. I was just finishing it up to give to you," she tried to explain, her voice drying up into a whisper. She gazed down at her feet and traced a corner of the fake Myrish carpet with her stocking-clad toe. "You're right, I was stupid."

She looked completely defeated standing there on the other side of the room. A wave of guilt washed over Sandor for causing some of Sansa's anguish. Part of him wanted to rush to her and give her whatever comfort he could, but another part of him was still overflowing with exasperation. He couldn't disagree with her assessment of the situation; it _was_ stupid to have thrown away her job just to make a gift for somebody like _him_.

Sansa hung the shirt on the knob of the door leading to the hallway. The garment was so long that the hem trailed on the floor. "I'm an idiot. I messed up everything," she mumbled miserably. Something about her tone gave Sandor the impression that she was talking about more than just her job. She sunk onto a corner of the bed, far from where Sandor was seated, her back turned away from him. "I wanted - I wanted you -" she began, then hiccuped and sneezed at the same time, and her words were lost as she clapped her hand over her mouth in embarrassment.

Sandor narrowed his eyes at her, puzzled. She just wanted what? "Spit it out, little bird," he said softly.

"I wanted you to be my b-boyfriend," she stuttered, her chin pressed against her chest. Her shoulders slumped and she stared into her lap dejectedly.

Sandor blinked once, nonplussed. "Boyfriend" was by far the dumbest, most foolish, most idiotic word he had ever heard. Who would ever use it to describe him? He was about as much of a boy as Sansa was an old hag. And he didn't want to be Sansa's friend. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, wanted to stare into her eyes and see his own desire reflected back and amplified a hundred times over, wanted to make her think about him when he wasn't around just as he thought about her, wanted to let her possess him and consume him. "Boyfriend" was a pathetic, wretched joke of a word that had no place in describing what he wanted to be for Sansa.

But Sansa must have taken his silence for rejection, for she took a sharp breath and continued, "After you told me everything about your life last night and I didn't really say anything, I thought perhaps you thought I was too naive to understand you. I wanted to show you that even if I don't completely get it, I still care, but then today I just proved how careless I can be. So I - I understand if you don't want - to be with me."

Each word struck Sandor like a dagger in his gut. How could she think that a few mistakes would make him change his mind about how much he wanted to be with her? Oh, right, he had yelled at her and called her stupid when she was seeking comfort and giving him a handmade gift. Shame and regret poured over him in turns, and he stared at the ceiling, appalled with himself.

He forced himself to shift over until he was sitting next to Sansa. She wouldn't look at him, so he lifted his finger to her chin and gazed into her blue eyes. They were gunky and reddened and beautiful as ever. He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. She stiffened against him in surprise before eventually relaxing into his kiss and tentatively placing an arm around his shoulders. He pulled her in close to him, then broke off the kiss and touched his forehead to hers. "You were careless today. You are naive about some things. You're not perfect, and you make mistakes the same as me," he rasped. "That doesn't mean I want you any less."

Sansa patted the tears away from her eyes with her fingertips. She searched his face, her eyes lingering on his scars. He forced himself to stay still, to keep his eyes on hers. "You're quite rude sometimes," she sniffled, and a corner of her lips twitched. "And I made the shirt for you because you should wear nicer clothes than you do. But I want you too."

Sandor bristled at the comment even as his heart soared - he was well aware that he could be rude, but what was so bad about his clothes? - but when he saw that she was finally smiling, he couldn't help but laugh. "Well then, perhaps we're well suited for one another." He tilted his head and gave her another tender kiss.

This time Sansa pulled away first. "So you'll - you'll be with me?" she asked, hope lifting her voice upward.

They were words that Sandor had never thought he would hear from anyone, much less from a woman he would never have dared thought to have as his. There could be only one response. "Aye, little bird, I'll be with you."

Sansa grinned and threw her arms around Sandor, knocking him backward onto the mattress. He grinned against her tongue as she opened her mouth onto his for a long, deep kiss. Hesitantly, he put his hands around her waist, beneath the black blazer but over her thin blouse. He desperately wanted to start pulling her clothes off, but he didn't dare do so without Sansa's go ahead, not after all the bloody crying. Instead, he settled for enjoying the feeling of her teeth on his lips, her breasts pressed up against his chest, her thigh on his groin.

She broke away again and sighed heavily, dropping her head to his shoulder. "Sandor, what am I going to do about my job?"

With difficulty, Sandor restrained himself from asking if they could talk about it tomorrow. He looked up at her face and tried to clear his head of all the lewd images that had been roiling through his brain. "I don't know the first thing about rebuilding a career in your line of work," he answered. "From what you told me though, it sounds like bridal shops are out for the time being." He glanced over at the new shirt she had made for him and admired the work. He knew next to nothing about fashion, but even he could tell that it was incredibly well made. "It looks to me like you have skills that go beyond just sewing wedding dresses."

Sansa followed Sandor's gaze over to the shirt. Then she glanced back down and smoothed her hand down the tie that she had made, which Sandor was still wearing. "I hadn't thought about menswear as a career direction," she allowed, staring thoughtfully at the houndstooth pattern. "But there are quite a few high-end tailors downtown. And several of them despise my old boss." She bit her lower lip as she considered the idea. "I think I can get an interview with a couple of them, at least. Would you mind if I borrowed the shirt and tie I made you to show as samples of my work?"

"Of course not. So long as you don't mind if I wear my shitty old clothes until somebody hires you," he teased.

Sansa smirked and sat up, her legs tucked beneath her on the bed. Sandor couldn't help but glance at the way her skirt rode up on her stocking-covered thighs. "Well, it's settled then," she said with a smile as she slipped Sandor's tie off, then coiled it neatly and set it on the bedside table. "I'll work on setting up interviews tomorrow." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "That only leaves one question."

Sandor propped himself up on his elbows. "What's that?"

Sansa's eyes danced as the corner of her lips curved upward. "How will we spend tonight?"

[to be continued]


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: This is a "mature" chapter. There is language and some (somewhat explicit) adult content here.

* * *

Under the current circumstances, Sansa should have been feeling confident, comfortable, seductive even. After all, Sandor had eagerly sloughed her uniform blazer off her back, and he was currently grazing his teeth along the neckline of her sleeveless blouse and fumbling with the zipper at the back of her skirt. Part of her did feel sexy, of course - when she tentatively began working at the buttons of Sandor's shirt, he gave her a look that could have burned a hole through her clothes - but she was still frustratingly preoccupied by work, or more appropriately, by her new lack thereof. She should have been reveling in the romance of her newfound relationship, but instead she kept seeing Petyr's sardonic smile each time she closed her eyes.

In the middle of a heated kiss, Sansa bit down on Sandor's lower lip and he made a noise that fell somewhere between a dog begging for a treat and an electric saw cutting through fiberglass. "She-wolf," he growled in pleasure, and rolled her back against the mattress. That, at least, pulled her fully into the moment. Sandor's massive body above her all but blotted out the late afternoon sunlight filtering through her curtains, and for several blissful minutes she thought only of his arms enveloping her and his tongue rasping against her lips and neck and collarbone.

But as Sandor struggled with the logistics of removing her skirt and control-top pantyhose while she lay flat, Sansa drifted back to Petyr and the irritating way his goatee had twitched as he had handed her the severance check. She still felt appalled with herself for the way she had wavered when he had given her a priggish little smirk and had told her that she could surreptitiously stay on his payroll if she took a job with Varys Couture, the biggest threat to the Baelish Bridal empire, and serve as his spy. The proposal had sorely tempted Sansa, she was ashamed to admit - she had so few connections in the industry besides Petyr, and her bank account balance was already dangerously low - but in the end she had turned him down. Petyr had asked her to conduct fashion espionage today, but tomorrow, he might order her to sabotage the competition. Ultimately, Sansa's honest, honorable father's lessons overrode her ambition, and she simply couldn't imagine herself clawing her way up the career ladder in such an underhanded way. In any case, she hadn't been able to bring herself to tell Sandor about _that_ part of her dismissal. She still felt far too embarrassed by her own less-than-honorable feelings.

"Finally!" Sandor huffed as he roughly yanked the pantyhose off her feet, bringing Sansa back to the present. She welcomed the interruption of her dark thoughts, and glanced down at the snagged stockings, all crumpled up next to her skirt. Considering the efficient but ungentle way that Sandor had removed them, she would almost certainly have to throw them out. _Good_ , she thought. _I never want to wear anything from that hideous uniform ever again._

"God, blue panties. You are killing me, girl," Sandor muttered, sounding more like he was in pain than pleasure and bringing a smile to Sansa's face, although in truth she felt that the practical cotton undergarment she was currently wearing was nothing to write home about. She had planned to change into a brand new matching set with pretty ribbons and delicate lace that she had purchased in hopeful anticipation of her first night with Sandor, but it was still tucked away in her dresser drawer with the tags still on; she had all but forgotten about it once Petyr ruined her whole career this afternoon. _Stupid Petyr and his stupid scheming_ , she thought resentfully, tearing her eyes from Sandor's still-clothed form and staring at the sunset framed by her window. Would she never be able to scrub her ex-supervisor from her mind?

Sandor, meanwhile, had slid off the edge of the bed onto the carpet and had commenced celebrating the bareness of Sansa's legs by nipping his way up her calves. She smiled again, still absorbed by her troubles, and wriggled away as his beard tickled her skin. Sandor stopped when he reached her kneecaps. "Little bird, for someone who was so interested in kissing me a few minutes ago, you seem in another world now."

Sansa exhaled, her breath heavy with lingering uncertainty, and with shame for having been caught thinking about something else. "I'm sorry," she sighed. "I shouldn't be so unfocused, not when you're doing - what you're doing." Sandor shrugged silently in response, and she sat up, then reached over to pat his shoulder. "Everything feels quite nice, really," she said encouragingly.

Sandor groaned and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Oh, 'quite nice,' good for me. Next you'll be telling me that my tongue feels 'pleasant' and my cock looks 'acceptable'."

Sansa's eyes popped open and her hands flew to her open mouth as the heat of humiliation bloomed across her cheeks. What man wanted to hear that his ministrations were "nice"? But then she detected the glint of amusement in his eyes and the hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You're laughing at me!" she squealed, and she crossed her arms over her chest, feeling even more ashamed than before.

"Aye, little bird," he agreed. "You deserved it." He scratched the back of his neck, and looked away, mumbling, "Besides, you're sweet when you blush."

Sansa bit back her smile. She didn't quite understand how Sandor could spit out the word 'cock' without so much as blinking yet become painfully bashful when he giving her a compliment, but she found it endearing either way. She knew better than to tell Sandor that, though.

Sandor leaned forward and pressed an affectionate kiss to the top of her forehead in a kind of wordless apology. His loose hair brushed against her cheek, and she smoothed it back from his scars.

She looked up into his eyes, feeling much less sorry for herself than she had earlier. "Thank you, Sandor. Please believe that my distraction has nothing to do with you. You are -"

"I know, I know, 'quite nice.' Guess I'll have to find some way to keep your attention, though." He grinned and stood up to shrug his rumpled button-down off his broad shoulders, then whipped his undershirt off and tossed it in the general direction of Sansa's previously discarded garments. "Thought we could even up the score with the clothes."

At the sight of Sandor's torso, Petyr's mocking grin finally evaporated into the mists of Sansa's mind. She let her eyes travel down Sandor's hairy, muscled abdomen and along the waistband of his black suit trousers. She slipped off the bed and stood in front of him, her bare feet between his stockinged ones. He smelled like sweat and traces of liquor and cheap hotel soap. With a surge of brashness, she brushed her knuckles against his skin and dipped one finger between the button of the pants and Sandor's stomach. "We're not really even though, are we?" she asked as she looked up at him, her face the very picture of innocent inquiry as she used her free hand to unzip his fly.

"No, we're not," he replied, his facial expression decidedly less innocent than Sansa imagined hers to appear. Sandor shook his hips a bit and let his pants fall to the floor before kicking them out of the way and hopping around a bit to take off his dark socks. Then he straightened back up and grasped her blouse by the hem to pull it over her head. " _Now_ we're even," he declared, standing back a step to give her body a detailed visual inspection.

The low natural light helped Sansa feel less exposed than she had under the harsh overhead fixture in Sandor's apartment, even though she was down to just her bra and panties now, and Sandor -

"How old are those underpants?" Sansa blurted out. The tight, threadbare boxer briefs were the same dingy non-color as the carpet in his apartment, the elastic was all stretched out, and there were little holes along the seams from too many washings. But even the pitiful state of Sandor's last remaining article of clothing could not obscure the powerful muscles of his thighs, nor the obviousness of his arousal.

Sandor narrowed his eyes at her. "They are _clean_ , and that's what matters," he groused. But then he got a mischievous, hopeful look on his face and said, "If their presence offends you so much, maybe you should take them off of me."

He teased as though it were a joke, but suddenly everything felt very serious to Sansa. She took a calming breath. Of course she knew that what she had been doing with Sandor had been leading up to now - not just tonight, but all they had done together since the day they first met - and she absorbed the gravity of the moment. Even the air in her lungs seemed heavy.

The last sliver of sun slipped below the building across from Sansa's window, and the remaining ambient light deepened the shadows in her room. The wool of the carpet beneath her bare feet felt scratchy as she took a step toward Sandor and lightly placed her hands on his hips. When she looked up into his face again to make sure he still wanted her to undress him, she saw that he was no longer smirking at her. He was baldly staring, unsmiling, with his lips just parted and his eyes pinned to hers.

Sansa swallowed and gently pulled Sandor's hips against her waist, and he uttered a quiet, garbled curse in response. She hooked her thumbs beneath the waistband of his briefs and closed her eyes. There was no going back now. Feeling both brave and awkward, she slipped the garment down the taut curve of his buttocks, then drew it further down his hips until he shifted and it fell to the floor.

Sansa's courage failed her then. As much as she wanted to look at all of Sandor, she couldn't quite bring herself to do it yet. She covered her shyness by standing on her tiptoes and grabbing Sandor around the neck to pull him in for a long, wet kiss.

Sandor wrapped his arms about Sansa's waist and ground himself up against her panties, and the little spring below her shoulder blades told her that he had unclasped her bra. She shimmied the straps down her forearms and stepped away from Sandor just long enough to let the lingerie drop to the floor, then immediately mashed her breasts up against him. Just as she wasn't quite ready to see Sandor completely nude, she needed a few moments to mentally prepare before she let him gaze at so much of her. But being pressed skin to skin with him here in this warm room, in this soft light, was a good way to get there. She kissed him again, desire washing over her body and up her spine and in her belly.

"Sansa," Sandor groaned as he broke away, and her name was as thick as pitch on his tongue. Without warning, he dropped to his knees and swiped his tongue along the lace of her panties, holding her in place with one palm on the small of her back. She felt the fingers of his other hand trail up along her thigh and graze the fabric between her legs. "Let me take these off of you," he demanded, or maybe he was begging. It was getting hard for Sansa to tell, what with the lightheadedness accompanying her overwhelming desire for him.

In any case, she placed her hands lightly on his shoulders and nodded and mumbled, "Yes, please," and Sandor nearly tore them off of her in his haste to comply with her request.

"Fucking -" Sandor seemed to be gaping at her newly revealed skin. "God, it's even better than I imagined," he exclaimed.

"Um, thanks," Sansa replied uncertainly, shifting her weight to one foot and quelling her impulse to cover herself with her hands. "What is?"

He laughed against her belly and nuzzled her right _there_ , in the thickest part of the hair between her legs. "This. It's red. _God,_ " he barked, his words muffled.

Of course it was red. What was he expecting, purple? Sansa blushed, feeling vaguely embarrassed. Given the way Sandor was talking about it, he certainly _sounded_ as though he liked it, but Sansa couldn't shake the feeling that it just generally seemed rude to even bring up the existence of pubic hair. "Right. Well -"

Sandor cut her off with a guffaw that made his shoulders shake. He started laughing so hard that he pulled away from her and sat back on the carpet, his legs akimbo and his back hunched over, his head in his hands.

Sansa pressed her lips together and put her hands on her hips, feeling self-conscious and annoyed, bordering on upset. She never, ever laughed at Sandor's scars, or his abnormal size, or his hairy chest, or all the other things that made him feel awkward, yet here he was -

Sandor glanced up at her and rolled his eyes, then gave her an impertinent grin. "Oh, don't get your panties in a bunch. Not that you - well, you know what I mean."

Sansa gave a high little harrumph and crossed her arms over her bare breasts, wishing that she still had some clothes on.

But then Sandor's smile was gone, and he was gazing at her seriously again. "I was laughing because this still feels impossible to believe. That a sweet little perfect fucking woman like you would want -" he gestured to his scars, then down his body, which was now mostly obscured in shadow.

Sansa didn't know what to say; didn't know if there was anything to be said at all. She paced over to where he sat and knelt behind him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her body to his back. Sandor reached up and stroked her hair as she kissed his cheek with all the tenderness she could muster.

He cleared his throat and leaned back and stretched out until he was laying on the floor, his head propped up on his elbow. "Come over here with me."

Sansa smiled and slipped into Sandor's arms. He rolled her up next to his body and she rested her head on his bicep, her hair snagging on the pile of the carpet. His free hand poured down the curve of her breast, the dip of her waist, the flare of her hip, like a waterfall molding the sandstone riverbed beneath. Sansa reached up to touch his face, skating her fingers along the ridges of his scars and the stubble of his beard, and when she looked into his eyes she found it hard to believe, now, that he had ever thought she would not want him. As she nuzzled his chin, he sighed the heaviest of sighs, as if the breath released all of his burdens into the evening. Sansa felt that way too, here in the near-darkness, that calmness in her bones.

The bliss only lasted for a moment though, because then Sandor coughed and muttered something that Sansa didn't quite catch.

"What was that, Sandor?" she asked tentatively. Perhaps, after all this, he had said something gentle that he had been unable to articulate earlier. Her heart felt full with anticipation.

"I said - God, I feel like a bloody teenager saying this -" he looked away, his lower lip curled up in self-loathing.

"Yes?" Sansa whispers, her skin tingling. If he was this uncomfortable about something, it had to be good.

He sighed and mumbled, his face contorted in mortification, "- do you have a condom?"

Sansa flushed hot with embarrassment. His question was a reasonable one, given the circumstances, but she couldn't help feeling silly that she had expected him to express tender feelings. But then he had already said so many sweet things so far. From tonight alone, he had probably reached his quota for expressing tender feelings for the rest of the month.

Sandor apparently mistook the reason for her humiliation, for he continued, "Not that I would expect you to keep something like that around -"

At that, Sansa's face got even hotter and her eyes opened wide.

"Of course I wouldn't think badly of you if you _do_ have a package here -" Evidently he saw something on her face that he interpreted to mean that she was angry with him.

He moaned in dismay. "Fuck, Sansa. I don't care if you've had one man or a hundred, I just want to do this right." He sat up and ran his hands through his hair, clearly vexed with himself. Sansa rose to her knees, her forearm covering her breasts out of habit, her hair tangled all around her arms and shoulders and down her back. Sandor gazed at her, appearing physically pained. "We'll do this when I'm prepared. Not when -" he carried on, describing himself in colorful language that more or less added up to saying that he felt like an idiot.

Sansa looked past him, not really paying attention, her eyes snagging on her little square crossover bag hanging from its peg on the wall. She thought back to her first date with Sandor and grinned as she hopped up in glee and stepped over to her purse, quickly unzipping and rummaging through it.

"-I'm such a fucking - little bird, is everything alright?" Sandor's voice trailed off as Sansa whipped back around. His eyes grew wide and traveled from her face down to her breasts and legs.

Triumphantly, she held up the foil-wrapped prophylactic between two forefingers, a shy smile on her face. "Margaery gave me one of these before our first date." She felt giddy, dizzy. "I was mad at her at the time, but I guess she somehow knew that you would be - special to me." She smiled again, and she met Sandor's eyes, black fire smoldering in their charcoal depths. She no longer minded that he could see her whole body. She wanted him to look, to drink her in, to enjoy her. Feeling bold, she flicked her long hair over her shoulder, allowing Sandor an unobstructed view of her torso. He swallowed, his throat clicking dryly.

Now it was her turn. She gazed down to where Sandor sat nude on the carpet and finally let her eyes trace the lines of the muscles on his chest, down his hard, solid stomach, and then finally, down lower. When she looked back up into Sandor's eyes, he looked like he would devour her whole, then and there.

The short walk back to where Sandor was sitting felt like it took years, or milliseconds; her heart pounded like a sewing machine needle pumping through linen. As she stood before him, he took the square wrapper from her and brushed his nose against her knee, taking another playful nip. Sansa swatted him on the head playfully, but heat poured through her all the same.

Sandor leaned back from her and she missed his touch, but then she heard the ripping of the package and the snick of latex unrolling, and a moment later, he took her hand and said, "I'm - I'm ready now."

Sansa grasped his fingers in hers. "I'm ready too, Sandor," she replied, and gazed down at the welcome sight of his face. He pulled her down beside him and enveloped her in his strong arms, offering her his love and protection.

* * *

Sandor laid Sansa down beside him on the floor, with her back on the carpet and her pretty slim shoulders framed by his forearms and her hair tangled up and spilling all over the place, soft and light as unspun silk. The low evening light softened her features and made her glow like some ethereal fairytale creature - a mermaid come ashore, or some sylvan sprite who turned woodcutters into forest animals if they tried to chop down her beloved trees.

He felt stiff as a tree himself as he smoothed his palm up her thigh and between her legs. When he touched her there, she was all warm and slick and _how the fuck did I ever get this fucking lucky_ thrummed through his brain, over and over again like a chant, and his sheathed cock twitched against her hip and her voice hitched up a few notches.

He was no skirt chaser, but he had been with enough women to know that he wouldn't get very far in pleasing Sansa without some guidance from her. "What do you like? Is this how I should touch you?" he breathed, sliding the tips of his fingers against her wet little cunt.

Sansa's eyes fluttered closed in response, her back arching up as she sighed. It looked really fucking hot, but it didn't answer the question.

"Sansa," Sandor tried again. He needed to know what worked for her, or else the endeavor would be pointless. If he was going to sleep with his very first - girlfriend, whatever, fuck, the word was nearly as stupid as 'boyfriend' - then she should be wrung out from pleasure by the end of the night. "Tell me. Do you want me inside you yet, or should I touch you more first?"

Sansa opened her eyes and looked at him like he had just asked her a difficult math question. "I don't know, what do you want to do?"

Now it was Sandor's turn to look at her strangely. "What do you think I want to do? I want to make you come so hard that this whole fucking building shakes." He had expected that to elicit a positive reaction, but Sansa only blinked at him, seeming not to understand, although her cheeks were rapidly growing pink again. Sandor had to stop himself from rolling his eyes in frustration and he stilled his hand. "But I can't make that happen unless you tell me how."

"That's - it's not something people usually talk about, is it?" she replied, and Sandor thought to himself, _I sure as hell am going to tell you loudly and often what I like, little bird, though that will probably amount to a recitation of every time you ever touched me_. "To be perfectly honest, I've never -" she faltered, clearly too uncomfortable to continue.

Never? Never _what_? Sandor suddenly felt faintly ill, as though the hangover from earlier in the day was rushing back. There couldn't be anything good coming at the end of such a sentence - or at least, nothing that would make it easier for him to reach his stated goal.

"I've never -" Sansa had an expression on her face that looked as though she were in one of those dreams where she went grocery shopping and and just realized that she forgot to put on clothes, " - finished when a man's inside me." She rushed out the remainder of the words in one great breath, as if saying it faster would make it less awkward for her to use what she considered such coarse language.

Sandor barked a guffaw, just once, in great relief. He couldn't help himself, though he did feel a bit guilty.

Sansa huffed, looking hurt, the same as when he laughed at her earlier. She raised her voice as she explained defensively, "I've never talked about this sort of thing with a man before, and _certainly_ not when we're both unclothed and about to -" She stopped herself as Sandor started smirking again. Her lips pressed together in a thin, irritated line before she continued, "You know, my previous boyfriends didn't spend their time talking when we were -"

Sandor narrowed his eyes. He didn't want to hear about her previous boyfriends. He wanted to make her forget all about them. "You've come before, at least. So you know what works for you."

Sansa looked like she wanted to melt into the fibers of the carpet now, but she nodded all the same.

Sandor's cock twitched again as he imagined Sansa in her bed, in the dark, with her hands down her panties. "Show me," he rasped, and moved his hand away from her thighs.

Sansa's eyes went wide, the whites shining in the near-darkness, but otherwise she remained still. _You've gone too far, you stupid old arse,_ Sandor thought to himself, and shame washed over him. His pretty innocent Sansa probably thought he was a revolting pervert, somebody who got off on trying to make women do things they weren't comfortable with. She was probably wishing she hadn't invited him here in her bedroom, trying to find a way to refuse him. He was appalled with himself all over again.

But just as he was opening his mouth to apologize, to tell her that they could find some other way, Sansa gazed into his eyes and lifted her arm up from off the floor and placed her trembling hand lightly on her pale stomach, just above her belly button. She left it there for a moment, pausing as though she still hadn't entirely decided what she would do. And then she moved her hand down lower.

Sandor sucked in his breath at the sight. He had never witnessed anything so arousing as Sansa laying on the floor, her legs spread and her palm against that gorgeous little patch of coppery hair, her long fingers sliding back and forth. He couldn't take it anymore. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes in utter bliss.

"I thought you wanted to watch," Sansa said, and when Sandor looked back at her he saw that her brows were furrowed in genuine confusion. Sandor wanted to laugh again, though this time he had the sense to hold it back. What kind of green idiot boys had she been with before? "Should I stop?" she asked.

"No!" Sandor growled, more aggressively than he intended, and placed his hand over hers. "Keep showing me, little bird," he added more gently, deeply gratified with her willingness to change her ideas about what was appropriate and proper in this situation. "Can I help?"

Sansa bit her lip and her mouth curved upward, a combination of coy and shy that made Sandor ache for her. "Of course," she replied, and began moving her hand again.

Sandor shifted his body so that his face was level with her breasts. His sheathed cock jutted up against Sansa's hip; truth be told, he would have liked to have been skin to skin with her, but after building an entire career based on calculating risks, he wasn't about to do something irresponsible. He brushed his fingertips against her opening, below where she was caressing. She was so wet now that she would almost certainly find a stain on her fake Myrish carpet in the morning. The mental image made him even harder.

Sansa inhaled as he slid a finger into her, and she exhaled with even more force when he swiped his tongue over her rosy pink nipple. "Sounds like you like that," he commented wryly, her breast muffling his words.

"Ye - yes," she panted, her voice wavering.

Well, if she liked that, he could do even better. He opened his mouth against her nipple again and grazed the top row of his teeth across the bump.

She gasped and tensed up all at once. "Oh, Sandor, that's -"

"Yes, little bird?" He loved hearing her like this, panting his name, with her free hand fluttering against his back. He kissed the sensitive flesh again and skated his teeth across her nipple again, rougher this time.

"Sandor, that's - that's - OW! Too hard!" She yelped and covered her breast with her hand. "No more teeth, please."

Well, that wasn't exactly what he was going for. "Got it, no teeth," he muttered sheepishly, and when she resumed touching herself again, he was careful to use only his lips and tongue on her skin. Judging by her sweet little sighs, that seemed to be working better. "See? It's not so hard to tell me what you want."

Sansa chuckled, but it turned into a low moan when Sandor slid another finger inside of her. She seemed to be getting closer, with her eyes squeezed shut in concentration, but then every so often she would peek at him, as though she were trying to figure out whether Sandor was still enjoying himself. It was making Sandor rather self-conscious. Was she just putting on some kind of show for him? He didn't think so - she was flush and wet as could be, yet doubt scratched at his mind. But then she gave one long, breathy sigh, and he knew it was the real thing.

"Sandor," she whispered as she half-opened her eyes. "I think I'm - I'm close - "

"Keep going then," he urged, his voice crackling dry in his throat. "I'm in no hurry."

Instead she slowed the motions of her hand and removed her arm from around his shoulder. "Actually, I thought, maybe we could try -" she groaned again, but Sandor got the impression that this particular sound was more out of frustration than from arousal. "I want to try to finish with you," she blurted out, and she was clearly so shocked by her admission that her free hand actually flew up to to cover her mouth.

Just hearing her say that, Sandor almost came right then and there, like a bloody virgin teenage boy. "How do you -" he tried to say, but his words came out in a gurgle. He cleared his throat and started over, and his voice arose from from somewhere deep down in his chest. "How do you want to do that?"

"Um, here, let me just show you." She sat up and pushed gently against his collarbone, until he rolled onto his back. As she straddled him, he thought he would explode into a thousand pieces, the heat of her slit pressed down against the length of his cock. He couldn't feel the wetness through the condom, but he knew her slickness was there, waiting for him, and just thinking about it made him feel like he would fly apart.

Sansa gazed down at him hopefully. "Are you ready?" she whispered shyly, like she was asking him to dance.

 _I've been ready since the first day we met,_ he thought, lying to himself. _I will never be ready for this,_ he mentally corrected himself, but he didn't want to wait for it any longer.

Sansa shifted herself a bit, and then she slid down onto him, faster than he expected. His hips bucked instinctively as she reached the base of his cock, and she squeaked rather similarly to the way she did a million years ago when he was purposely driving around the corners too fast on their first date. "Fuuuuck," he hissed, and grabbed ahold of her hips.

She placed one hand on Sandor's shoulder for balance and resumed touching herself with the other; her back curved inward over him, and her hair hung down over her face and got in his mouth, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen or felt. She couldn't seem to move herself, not with the way she was leaning forward, so he thrust up into her to give her the friction she would need. It was good for him with her there, with her hard little gasps and her breasts bouncing every time he lifted his hips, but it was also harder for him to move as much as he needed to, with Sansa's balance so precarious. It all seemed to be working for Sansa though. Soon her face was all scrunched up, her fingers were moving furiously, her balancing arm trembled, and a droplet of sweat slipped from her brow down to her chin and splashed against his chest. And then Sansa inhaled sharp, and her whole body rolled as though a wave were cresting up the length of her spine, and she flopped forward onto Sandor as she lost her balance while the pleasure washed over her.

As the last wave subsided, Sansa went limp as a deflated life raft against Sandor. He draped his arms over her back and kissed the crown of her head, holding her close, waiting as patiently as he could - which admittedly wasn't very patiently - for her to signal that it was his turn. He was still hard as a sword inside of her, but he dared not move before she did.

Finally, she sighed and extracted her hand from where it was smashed between their bodies. She coughed and a bit of her saliva came out on his neck. "Sorry," was the first intelligible thing she said, and she giggled abashedly. As she shifted her weight she squeezed his cock and Sandor had to close his eyes to keep focused.

"Was that 'quite nice'?" Sandor murmured and raised his hips. She panted from an aftershock, and he raised an eyebrow smugly.

Now Sansa was laughing outright, each breath causing her to tighten up around him and giving him more of that exquisite torture.

"Enough, woman," he grumbled as he rolled her onto her back with the two of them still joined. He thrust into her hard, and her laugh morphed into another gasp. "No more laughing while I'm inside of you."

Sansa smiled, and she ran her hands through his long hair without further comment. She wrapped her legs around him and let him set the pace, and he dipped his head down to take a quick nip of her jawline. The pressure of her heels against the back of his thighs got him close; the arch of her back got him closer.

He would have liked to have made her come again, to raise his body up on his arms and let her slip her hand down between them once more, but he didn't have enough control left. The coil inside of him sprang; his head snapped up, his eyes rolled back, his fingers clenched the carpet, the heavens spun out into crackling whites and sparkling greys and flashing coppers and neon blues, and when he came back down to earth he was rolled on his side, with Sansa Stark's head resting against his bicep and her body tucked up against his ribcage.

Sandor exhaled, long and slow, the scarred side of his mouth twitching. With the hand that wasn't holding Sansa, he snicked off the condom and tossed it onto his briefs, hoping he wouldn't forget that it was there when he went to go put them on later.

Sansa patted his face gently, and Sandor could smell _her_ on her fingers. If he were younger he probably would have been ready to go again from the scent alone. But he wasn't. He was old, and he was exhausted.

"Sandor?" Sansa queried in a small voice. Sandor's heart thumped in his chest. She sounded every bit as wrung out as he had hoped she would be.

"Yes, little bird?" he rasped. Something about the way she said his name made him wonder if she would give him more of her sweet words. What would she say? He held his breath and looked down into her wide, blue eyes. He would kill for her if she asked it of him. He might even parrot back some syrupy, mushy, pathetic pitiful romantic sentiment if she wanted to hear it from him.

She looked down, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. She licked her lips nervously. "You're laying on my hair."

"Oh," Sandor grunted. He adjusted his arm, feeling sheepish and awkward and annoyed with himself, and Sansa whipped her long locks out from under his elbow. She put her ear against his chest and slung her arm around him, her fingernails scratching lightly against his skin.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "For the - for making me feel so good."

Sandor hitched her up so that her head lay on his shoulder. "Rest, love," he whispered, the damnable word slipping out past his lips before he had the chance to bite it back.

Sansa had the good sense to ignore it, or maybe she didn't hear it at all. She simply reached up and brought his face toward hers and kissed the corner of his mouth, the one that would never close completely because of the scars.

[to be continued]


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: THANK YOU for the incredibly kind and helpful comments of the previous chapter. Things are going to get a little bit silly and complicated for a few chapters but I hope you will find this story going in a fun, work-through-the-discomfort character-growing direction.

* * *

Sansa awakened all scrunched up on the carpet of her dark room with Sandor snoring in her arms. Even with her window open, her room was still warm and stuffy, and it smelled like unwashed bodies and sex. She listened for voices or TV in the living room, but all she could hear was her breathing and Sandor's. That was a relief - it meant that Jeyne must still be at work and Margaery must have gone out with friends - and she didn't have the energy to make awkward introductions between Sandor and her roommates right now.

Sansa's neck ached and her arm tingled painfully where Sandor was using her as a pillow. Her teeth felt mossy and her face felt stiff with the morning's makeup still smeared on. She craved a cold glass of water. iAnd a healthy snack,/i she thought, remembering that she and Sandor had never quite gotten around to eating dinner. Her stomach gurgled. iOr maybe a burrito,/i she mentally corrected. iAnd a plate of nachos./i

As she moved her shoulder, Sandor snorted awake just enough to roll toward her and drag her back into his embrace. He brushed his lips against her cheek, and she couldn't help but laugh as his beard tickled her skin.

"Wanna go again?" he whispered in her ear, his voice still thick from sleep, and he ground up against her belly as he smoothed his hand along her side.

Sansa's cheeks flushed hot in the darkness, though really there was little reason for blushing now. She wanted to do more with Sandor, and soon, but what she needed at this moment was a shower. Gently shifting away from him, she replied truthfully, "We can't. There was only one condom, remember?"

Sandor grunted in response and grazed his fingertips across her hip, down the curve of her bottom. "There're still things we can do." Then, before Sansa had time to fully contemplate what he meant, he grabbed her around the waist and rolled onto his back and hitched her up past his face until his nose was rubbing against the soft skin below her bellybutton.

She was so surprised by the suddenness of Sandor's movement that by the time she found her voice, he had already pulled her legs apart and was working on getting her knees positioned on the floor on either side of his head. "Wait!" she cried, holding the edge of her bed for balance as she sat upright and tried to squirm away. "I'm not very, um - fresh right now -"

Sandor laughed and held her hips in place as he inhaled deeply. The air swirled cool around Sansa's thighs even as the rest of her body bloomed with the heat of embarrassment. "You smell like we just fucked," he declared with a chortle, and he licked her. "You taste like it, too."

Sansa cringed and was glad Sandor couldn't see her face in the darkness, though admittedly he would have only seen the bottom of her chin even if the light were on. It was humiliating to think that Sandor would do ithat/i to her for the first time when she was all sweaty and sticky from their lovemaking. She tried fruitlessly to twist away, but Sandor locked each of her thighs in his big arms and swiped his tongue right where she had been touching herself earlier, and she shuddered with the echo of her previous orgasm. But shame over the state of her cleanliness overpowered her increasing arousal, and she suggested reluctantly, "Maybe I should bathe first -"

"Not a chance. I like you like this. Now stop talking and start singing, little bird." He dug his fingers into her flesh and pressed her down onto his mouth, and Sansa quickly cast off her lingering discomfort over her circumstances.

Afterwards, Sansa flopped to the floor even stickier and sweatier, but at least the crick in her neck was gone. In fact, all of her muscles felt languid, mushy. She felt around the floor until she found Sandor's hand and grasped it. She was far too warm to hold him close, even though he certainly deserved it.

"Been thinking about doing that for a while," Sandor admitted, sounding smug. He released her hand and wiped his mouth with his forearm, then laced his fingers with hers.

"I'd be pleased to do the same to you," Sansa replied in a low voice, feeling bold. It was only polite to offer to return the favor, of course, but a newly awakened part of her wanted to make him writhe as helplessly as she had been doing just a few minutes earlier.

He chuckled hoarsely, and Sansa heard him thud his head against the carpet. "I am sorry to say that I'll have to take you up on that offer another night. Another night isoon/i," he added. "I should go home. I still have all my shit from the conference out in the car, and it's been too many days since I set foot in a real gym."

Sansa didn't really mind. She would have much to do tomorrow anyway, between getting her work samples together and setting up interviews and finding a way to stretch out whatever was left in her bank account.

Sandor released her hand and sat up, and Sansa heard him shuffling around on the floor. "Where's the light switch? I need to find my clothes."

Sansa summoned the energy to get up and flicked on the lamp on the nightstand. She sat on her bed, blinking the brightness out of her eyes. Sandor was standing a few feet away, pulling on his pants, but in the low light he looked a little fuzzy to her. She rubbed her eyes and put on the glasses she usually only wore for sewing, but was finding that she sometimes needed after a long day.

"Bloody hell," Sandor muttered, sounding pained. "Wear those next time." He pulled his undershirt on but just crumpled his button-down into a ball.

Sansa smiled as she removed her bathrobe from a peg on the wall and slipped it over her shoulders. "You like my glasses?" she asked, pleased, and adjusted the frames on the bridge of her nose.

"I like _you_ with your glasses. Especially when you're not wearing anything else." He wrapped his arms around her and leaned in to give her a long, wet kiss.

Just as Sansa was starting to wonder if Sandor had changed his mind about leaving, he broke away and ran his big hand through his hair. He looked nervous, or maybe even shy. "Maybe you could come to my place tomorrow night. I can cook and you can -"

"Return your favor?" Sansa finished, realizing with mortification as she saw the surprise on his face that he was going to suggest something completely different.

He grinned and responded, "I was going to say that you could bring a bottle of wine, but fuck the booze, I'd much rather have your pretty pink lips wrapped around my -"

"Right, well," she coughed to cover her embarrassment. "Dinner sounds lovely."

Sandor looked away and rubbed the back of his neck in that way he did when he was being bashful. "You could stay over if you wanted," he mumbled out of the side of his mouth. "My mattress isn't exactly a feather bed, and I'll have to get up early to work out, but -"

Sansa cut off his excuses with a kiss. "Yes," she agreed, her eyes shining. "Yes, of course."

* * *

Sansa never imagined that two weeks of pure bliss could fly by so quickly. She saw Sandor nearly every night and they always seemed to find excuses to rush through any planned activity in order to get to the part of the evening that they anticipated the most. In so doing, they discovered many delightful new ways to please each other. Sansa grew more comfortable with Sandor's shamelessness over bringing her pleasure, and Sandor seemed to finally trust in the authenticity of Sansa's desire and tender feelings for him. When they lay back in bed, wrung out from a night of intimacy, they would stay up and talk and argue and tell stories and say sweet things and sometimes they would start kissing and the whole cycle would repeat itself. In the mornings, Sandor would pull himself out of bed after just a few hours of sleep with dark circles beneath his eyes and grouse that Sansa was turning him into an old man, and Sansa would tease him and tell him that if he wanted to go to bed earlier, he should start seducing her earlier in the evening. Then he would glare and tell her to get a job.

Unfortunately, that directive was proving more difficult to carry out than Sansa had anticipated. The high-end tailors wouldn't hire a former Baelish employee without Petyr's personal recommendation. The mid-level retailers were all staffed up. Petyr texted her a few times to tell her that his offer still stood if she were clever enough to take it, but she deleted his messages without answering them.

On the last day of the month, while Sansa slumped over her laptop perusing online classifieds advertising for seamstress positions at department stores and outlet malls, she received an email warning that she had nearly reached the limit on her credit card. iHow can that be?/i she thought anxiously, clicking over to review her recent purchases.

The last time she'd used her debit card was to buy a tank of fuel for her gas guzzling Mustang. Perhaps she should have replaced her stolen car with a sensible, high-efficiency subcompact like her mother had advised. It was too late for that, though.

Now quite concerned, Sansa tabbed over to check on her bank account balance. There was hardly enough there to pay her cell phone bill, much less her share of the rent.

She burst into tears.

Some time later, when Sansa got control of herself, she slunk out of her room and shamefacedly walked through the apartment over to Margaery's room. Margaery would understand, wouldn't she? The Tyrells owned the building they lived in, after all. Surely her friend could wait to be reimbursed until Sansa had a steady paycheck.

"Oh no, Sansa, I'm afraid I can't do that," Margaery replied to Sansa's entreaty as she sat like a queen on her rose-colored bedspread, placidly scrolling through the messages on her phone.

"Why not?" Sansa asked from the doorway in as calm a voice as she could manage. "You don't pay any rent at all." It was a mistake to say so; Sansa knew that Margaery prided herself on her startling success in all other areas of her life, and the Tyrell girl didn't like to be reminded that her independence was only possible because of the generosity of her family.

Margaery's eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second before she regained her composure. "To be frank, Sansa, my sweet brother needs a place to live. I was going to see if Jeyne had some other options, since she barely makes rent with the three jobs she has -" here Margaery cleared her throat, and continued, "but it sounds as though you'll be moving on first."

Sansa's response caught in her throat as she felt the impact of the the betrayal of the person she had thought to be her friend. Margaery was one of the first people she'd met when she moved to King's Landing, and she had recently helped her, albeit rather indirectly, to win Sandor's heart. But then Margaery was always looking for the next thing or person to amuse her, and she seemed content to cast off those that no longer caught her attention. Perhaps Sansa should have been expecting to be shoved to the curb so that Margaery's handsome and fun-loving brother could also live rent-free.

"I'd be happy to give you a week to find a place," the brunette offered.

"I'm quite sure I won't need that much time," Sansa said coldly, and turned on her heel out of the room. She grabbed her car keys from the rack by the front door and ran down the stairs.

Sansa drove the Mustang around on wet, half-flooded city streets. The rain fell as heavily as the tears Sansa felt like shedding. The skies were as black as her mood. iNo,/i she thought, ias black as Margaery's poisoned, shrunken heart/i. The rapidly shrinking logical part of Sansa's brain reminded her that she was wasting her last tank of gas, but she couldn't stand to be in that apartment one moment longer.

As Sansa drove past one of Petyr's satellite stores, she ran down the meager options available to her absent any employment prospects. She couldn't - wouldn't - give up and move back home in the north. Her mother and father expected her to set an example for her younger siblings, and she hadn't even been able to bring herself to admit to her parents that she'd gotten fired, much less tell them that she had run out of money. But neither could she ask her parents to front a deposit on a new apartment. They were still paying for three college educations, not to mention Bran's costly medical bills and therapeutic treatments. Besides, it was simply too embarrassing to beg.

She found herself parked in front of Sandor's apartment. His Bronco was in its usual spot, seeming somehow less imposing without its gruff owner in the driver's seat.

Sansa loathed herself for coming here, for even considering asking him for help. Sandor had told her about the gambling addict who had feigned interest in him so she could spend his money, and she couldn't bear to let him think that she was using him similarly. She shut off the Mustang and buried her face in her hands, listening to the rain plopping on the windshield.

Someone rapped on her window and she looked up. It was Sandor in his gym clothes, looking surprised and a little grumpy at getting wet. He gestured for her to get out.

She popped out of the car and ran into the apartment behind him, the deluge making her clothes and hair surprisingly damp her in spite of the short distance to his front door.

After Sandor had gotten her settled on his couch with a glass of wine and a towel, he asked quietly, "Job search not going so well?"

"No, it's going horribly," Sansa admitted. She thought she would start tearing up again, but she swallowed back the sob. Sandor had seen her cry enough about this topic. She willed serenity into her features. "But something even worse has happened." She summarized her financial travails and her conversation with Margaery.

"Stay with me," he offered instantly, much faster than Sansa had expected him to. It made her a nervous. She believed wholeheartedly in the strength of her feelings for Sandor, but she wasn't so sure if their still-new relationship was ready for daily domesticity. She didn't know how to respond, so she said nothing.

He mistook her hesitation for distaste for his apartment. "I know it's not a gilded palace like your current building, but -"

"No, that's not it at all!" Sansa hurried to explain and scooted closer to him on the couch, though she was a bit put out that he believed she would cast aspersion on the state of his home when he was offering it up to her. "I just - I care for you, and I wouldn't want my desperate circumstances to cause you hardship."

"You're over here all the time. How much different could it be?" he muttered and flattened his lips, looking annoyed. Then he seemed to realize that it sounded like he was complaining about her frequent presence, for he added, "And I like it when you're here."

The corner of Sansa's lips turned up at the admission. She lowered her eyes leaned in to allow a sweet short kiss. She sighed and gently bumped her forehead against Sandor's. "Yes. If it is only temporary, and I promise to pay you back as soon as I can."

"If that's how you want it, little bird."

Sansa looked into Sandor's eyes and nodded. The agreement worked for her. But was it what Sandor wanted?

* * *

In spite of her initial reservations about staying with Sandor - she did not dare think of it as "moving in together" - she rather quickly warmed to the idea as she began boxing her belongings the next morning. The whole idea seemed rather romantic, really. While clearing her closet out, she allowed herself to imagine waking up in Sandor's arms each morning, cuddling with him on the couch after he got home from work, convincing him to skip the gym on the weekends and stay in bed with her. He could teach her more about cooking, and she could hang some of the watercolors that Bran had painted for her in the living room.

When she dropped off some of the small boxes at his - their - no, it was still his apartment - Sansa was pleased to see that Sandor seemed kind of excited as well. He presented her with a resident parking pass and showed her the dresser drawers he had cleared for her, and he demonstrated how they could fit her bedframe behind the couch for safekeeping. When she opened the medicine cabinet to store her toiletries, she found that he had purchased the biggest box of condoms she had ever seen.

By the time that moving day officially arrived, Sansa's whole body tingled with anticipation. Each time she passed Sandor in the hall to bring more of her things down to his car parked at the curb, he gave her a smirk that made her heart thump. She wondered if he would give her an hour to unpack when they got back to the apartment, or if he would just throw her over his shoulder and carry her inside like a wild man. She didn't think that she would mind if he did.

Sansa placed the last box in the back seat just as Sandor finished securing her mattress to the roof of the car. "That's the last one," she declared. "I don't even have to go back inside. I left the key on the fireplace mantle." She dusted her hands on her jeans and put her hands on her hips, feeling satisfied and hopeful.

Sandor rolled his massive shoulders and approached Sansa. He loomed over her in that way that might once have intimidated her, but now only enflamed her. "Ready to go home?" he asked, his voice low and filled with promise.

"Not yet," she said, smiling coyly and placing her hand on his chest. "First I need a kiss."

"So do I." He pulled her in close and leaned down. Sansa closed her eyes and lifted her face and waited for his lips to crash down hard on hers.

"Hey! _Hey!_ "

Sansa's eyes fluttered open and she turned her head toward the distraught voice. It came from Jeyne, standing beneath the gilt building awning in her blue and white waitress uniform, her dark hair flying, with a stuffed duffel bag slung over one shoulder and her arms burdened by a box full of video game consoles and snarled cables.

Sandor released Sansa and straightened up. "What do you want, girl?" he growled, clearly miffed at having been interrupted, or perhaps for being caught in a tender moment.

Jeyne glared at Sansa. "Margaery kicked me out! She said that since Loras is coming to live with her, Renly should have a room too."

Sansa hung her head in shame. Jeyne's eviction was all her fault. She was Sansa's oldest friend, and her only friend here in the city who came from up north, and now she was suffering.

"What am I going to do? I can't afford any of the places close to my jobs." She didn't need to mention that she didn't have a car.

Sansa's eyes met Sandor's, and he gave her a look that clearly communicated, _You've got to be shitting me._

Sansa gazed at her forlorn friend sweating in the sunlight, carrying most of her possessions with nowhere to take them. "Please, Sandor." Jeyne had had no reason to come south with Sansa, but she had done so out of friendship. Sansa couldn't abandon her.

Sandor groaned and gave Sansa a pained, longing look. Her heart sank. This was not how she had wanted to start her new adventure with him at all.

Sandor popped his neck and stalked over to Jeyne, and for a moment Sansa thought he was going to yell at her. But instead he roughly grabbed the box of electronics from her hands. He glanced over his shoulder at Sansa with an unreadable expression on his face, then turned back to Jeyne. "Come on, girl. Throw your shit in the car and let's go."

* * *

[to be continued]

A/N: Lots of fluff is left in this story, I promise. But first, more awkwardness!


	11. Chapter 11

_It's too good to be true._ The thought drummed through Sandor's mind as Sansa's friend Jeyne shimmied into the back seat of his Bronco. He had been living a charmed life these past few months – he was doing well at work, he had silenced Cersei's insidious internal commentary, there was Sansa - everything about Sansa - and he had been an idiot to have expected his good fortune to last. He should have been more suspicious of these unanticipated, unsought gifts, should have been on the lookout for gathering storm clouds on the horizon. Pain always eventually poured down on happiness and flushed it clean away, as Gregor and Cersei had been quick to remind him back when they were both alive.

Sandor could already imagine the inevitable fuck-up playing out. Jeyne would do or say something bratty, maybe make a comment about his scars, and Sandor would blow up at her. Sansa would witness the whole ugly exchange and surely she would choose her childhood friend over the cruel, hulking brute of a man who she had somehow mistaken for a worthy love interest.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sandor observed Sansa in the passenger seat. She kept glancing at him and clearing her throat on the otherwise silent drive, but Sandor refused to look in her direction. All he could feel was annoyance at himself and at her. If she weren't so loyal to her friend - if she hadn't wanted to make him a gift that cost her a job - _if she wasn't who she is and wasn't everything that I like about her,_ he thought hopelessly. _If._

And _if_ he were being honest with himself, he couldn't have just left the dark-haired girl to fend for herself, either. Maybe he would have done so back when he was younger and had only contempt for sad-sack abandonment cases like Jeyne – like he had been, once – but Sansa wouldn't have wanted to spend time with him back then, not any more than he had wanted to be around himself. Sandor resolved to give Jeyne a chance. After all, that was _his_ only chance with Sansa.

He slammed the Bronco into its usual parking spot next to the green Mustang. The harsh afternoon sunlight highlighted the faded, peeling blue paint on his apartment's cracked stucco siding and made the two-story building look even more like a shithole than it usually did. _Welcome to your new palace, my lady,_ Sandor thought sarcastically, stealing a look at Sansa as she shuffled through her purse. _Ladies_ , he mentally corrected as he heard the squeal of the back passenger door that Jeyne opened. He went around the back of the car to untie the mattress while Sansa and Jeyne began wordlessly unloading boxes.

An hour later the Bronco was empty, Sansa was hanging her clothes in the bedroom closet, and Jeyne was washing up in the bathroom to get ready for her next shift. Sandor surveyed the state of his newly overstuffed living room. Sansa's mattress and bed frame had been shoved behind the couch, covered by a sheet, and her rolled-up fake Myrish carpet lay against the wall behind the dining table. Jeyne's belongings were tossed carelessly in the middle of the living room floor, her clothes already spilling out of her bags from a few minutes earlier when she had hurriedly sorted through them to find her uniform. The video game crap had been spread out all over the free weights in front of the television. _Bugger this_ , Sandor thought, anger swirling in his gut.

Jeyne emerged from the bathroom with her hair pulled into a bun and dark makeup smudged around her eyes. She wore a tight black dress and a nametag for a downtown cardroom that Sandor remembered from when he was younger and stupider with his paychecks.

Sandor opened his mouth to growl at the brunette to move her shit off the floor just as Jeyne reached into her purse and yanked out a fistful of cash.

"This should cover my third of rent and utilities," Jeyne muttered before Sandor could say anything, and she thrust a thick wad of small denomination bills in his direction. Much like Sansa had done when she had first met him, Jeyne didn't seem to want to look Sandor in the face, but her tone of voice held a mixture of irritation and pride that reminded him oddly of himself after Gregor had chased him out of the family home and he had learned to fend for himself. Jeyne's offering reflected the attitude of a person who knew that people didn't get something for nothing; she had probably long ago learned the consequences for taking assistance for granted.

Sandor didn't really need Jeyne's money - he could afford his crappy cramped apartment on his own, no thanks to anybody but himself - but he figured that refusing the girl would just piss her off, or worse, hurt her feelings, which he was even less equipped to deal with. He grabbed the stack of bills and shoved them into the back pocket of his jeans.

"I'll pick up some groceries after work for me and Sansa. And hopefully I will be out of here by the end of the month," the girl added.

Sandor nodded, further surprised by Jeyne's words. His lingering anger dissipated as he pulled a spare key from his wallet and handed it to her.

Jeyne accepted it and finally looked him in the face as she mumbled, "Thanks," then sprinted out the door to catch her bus.

Well, he had not been expecting any of that from Sansa's friend. Sandor bent over and absently rolled up some of Jeyne's console cables, feeling strangely soft toward the girl about whom he had been inclined to think the very worst.

Sansa staggered out of the bedroom, her arms loaded with comforters and pillows. "Where's Jeyne? I was going to make up the couch for her to sleep on."

"She's off to the next job," Sandor replied, nodding his head toward the front door and suddenly feeling uncomfortable in Sansa's presence now that Jeyne had left. He'd built this moment up in his mind and it was going so differently from how he had imagined it.

Sansa dropped her chin to her chest. She was obviously still feeling bad about being unemployed and dependent on Sandor, but there wasn't much more that he could do to help her that he hadn't already done. "Sandor -" she began, setting the bedding onto the couch and standing before him. She tucked a strand of loose red hair behind her ear. "This isn't how I wanted things to go today."

Sandor could see the regret in her eyes and hear it in the tone of her voice, and while he understood it, he didn't like it. All week, she had told him over and over again how indebted she thought she was to him, even before the debacle with Jeyne. He had brushed Sansa's comments off gruffly each time she had intimated such ideas, because the truth was that he hated the notion that she would kiss him, or flirt with him, or - god, sleep with him - because she felt she had to, rather than because she wanted him on his own merits. The thought made his stomach sour. He turned his face away from her and clenched his teeth in frustration.

"Stop," he muttered to the wall. He felt Sansa take his hand in hers, but he wasn't ready to look at her just yet. "I don't want to hear you begging me for forgiveness, or telling me that you think there is some debt to pay. There isn't," he growled. Sandor had been drawn to Sansa because of how she had approached him so guilelessly, so completely devoid of ulterior motives, so entirely in contrast to every other woman he had been with. The others had all wanted something out of him - his money, his size, his access to Joffrey - Sansa had just wanted him. Sandor hoped that was still the case.

Sansa sighed quietly. "Of course I appreciate that you took Jeyne in on short notice," she said, sounding sad and confused about Sandor's cold tone. "But – I know you did it because you care for me. I wasn't going to apologize for anything -"

That was a relief, at least. And there was something in her voice that made Sandor want turn back and listen to what she had to say. When he did, he noticed that she was standing at precisely the correct angle for him to see down the front of her blouse. _Hell, but that is a nice view,_ he thought to himself guiltily. Here he was, grappling with the fact that he didn't want Sansa to offer herself up to him out of a misplaced sense of obligation while simultaneously wishing that he could get a better look at her tits.

When he didn't respond, Sansa squeezed his hand. "I'm thrilled to be here with you, even under these imperfect circumstances. With the job search going so badly, and Margaery, and everything – moving in with you is the only thing I've been happy about all week. Aren't you still excited?" she asked, sounding uncertain of what his answer would be.

"Aye," he conceded, surprised by her words. This afternoon had diverged frustratingly from the course he had imagined it to take; "excited" was something he was having trouble feeling at the moment. He was glad Sansa seemed pleased, though, and that she wasn't bringing up any more nonsense about owing him something. Sandor tried to quell his lingering annoyance with himself, mostly feeling out-of-sorts and inappropriately horny. Sansa probably just wanted to rest right now; the last thing she needed was for him to start pawing at her clothes.

Sansa shifted her weight to one foot and looked down at her hand in his. "I'm sure Jeyne won't be back until late tonight - I was hoping we could go in your room - iour/i room -" Sansa corrected, trailing off. She placed her palm on his chest and scratched at the fabric of his shirt. "Perhaps we can take advantage of the empty apartment," she finished quietly, and when Sandor finally met her eyes he noticed just a trace of embarrassment in her expression and rather a lot of honest, open desire. "It's all I have wanted to do since I woke up this morning," she whispered as she dropped her eyes to the floor and her ears flushed bright red.

 _Oh,_ Sandor thought, and he nodded, comprehension dawning thickly and slowly as Sansa pulled him in the direction of their bedroom. So much for obligations. As she closed the door behind them and started unbuckling his belt, Sandor finally began to believe that things with Sansa just might work out alright.

A week and a half later, as Sandor leaned back in his office chair half-listening to some slimeball claimant chatter on the phone, he concluded that his new living situation was, in fact, working out alright. For the most part.

Sansa's friend Jeyne was resolute in her determination to contribute to the household. She paid for her share of groceries and some of Sansa's besides, she gave Sandor pages and pages of coupons from the dry cleaning place where she worked on weekday mornings, and she brought home leftovers from the Pentoshi restaurant where she waited tables in the afternoons. On Saturday, she had cooked a huge pile of scrambled eggs for breakfast (though, as far as Sandor could tell, it was the only meal that the girl knew how to make).

The girl did turn out to be just as messy and disorganized as Sandor had feared she would be - she was constantly leaving her clothes and video game crap all over the floor of the living room - but that inconvenience primarily resulted in the neat, order-craving Sansa to retreat to the bedroom early in the evening, which was just fine with Sandor. Besides, Jeyne was almost never home anyway, and when she was, she was usually either conked out on the couch from exhaustion or glued to the television jabbing at one of her gaming controllers. Luckily, the girl's frequent absence or distraction meant that Sandor had gotten laid almost every night this week, and quite a few of the mornings too.

Sandor tolerated Jeyne, but he reveled in the new experience of living with a girlfriend. Even beyond the sex, there were many other aspects to sharing space with Sansa that Sandor liked a lot. He liked it when she reached for him and gave him a kiss as he rose from bed. He enjoyed watching her get dressed; listening to her as she talked on the phone with her brothers and sisters and friends up North; seeing her face scrunch up while she stitched together work samples and complained about how her personal sewing machine was nowhere near as good as the ones at the bridal shop where she'd been fired. But he really, really liked all the sex too.

"Hey! Did you hear what I said?" the claimant's voice squawked through the earpiece, jerking Sandor back from the mental images of Sansa's soft curves in the dawn light. "If you don't issue a check for the amount I require, your supervisor is going to hear from me, and from my attorney too."

The client was an incorrigible con artist; her file overflowed with paperwork from mostly unsuccessful attempts to swindle the company. This time, she was trying to get Kingsguard to issue a check for extensive, costly body work on a vehicle that she could not prove actually existed. It was a classic and rather poorly executed effort to get cash that she never planned to apply toward repairs of a car she probably didn't even own. The only reason that her case had made it all the way up to Sandor was because the woman had insisted that the lower-level adjusters were wrongly denying her claim.

Sandor rolled his eyes and sighed in exasperation. He always did his best to treat the company's policyholders fairly, but he had little patience for chickenshit freeloaders who issued meaningless threats, especially when their stupidity was distracting him from actual, important work – or in cases like today, when it was keeping him from thinking about what he wanted to do to Sansa when he got home. "Go ahead and try to sue us," he barked into the mouthpiece. "You're the one in breach of contract, not Kingsguard, so think carefully about what you do next. If we open up an investigation and find that you are attempting to engage in fraudulent activity, you'll be hearing from _our_ attorneys." _They call you the Hound because you can sniff out fraud a mile away,_ Sansa had told him on their first date. He smirked at the memory.

The claimant sputtered, huffed and hung up. Sandor was more than happy to end the argument, but he suspected that he'd hear from her at least once more before he could finally seek authorization to terminate her policy.

The thought reminded Sandor of an important item that he'd meant to check on earlier in the day. He swiveled his chair so that he could face his computer, then brought up Sansa's file on his screen. To his dismay but not his surprise, her premium was long past due. A couple more weeks and her coverage would be cancelled automatically because of non-payment. Sansa had been putting on a brave face about the lack of a job, but it had become clear to him that she would need to find something – anything - soon. He hadn't realized that she was this getting this desperate, though.

He pulled out his cell phone and opened a blank text message, then changed his mind and put the device back in his pocket. There was little point to making the poor girl feel even worse about her situation right now, even though she had kind of created the problem herself. The one time he had brought up that she should just apply to anything available, "career field" be damned, she had grown upset and withdrawn. He closed Sansa's file on his desktop, wishing that she would swallow her pride. He had done it enough times, and eventually it had worked out for him.

When Sandor got home that night, he found Jeyne flopped on the couch in her waitress uniform, a pair of massive headphones over her ears. Her cardroom dress for the evening shift was set out on the cushions next to her, and her pointy black shoes lay on the floor where she had kicked them off after she got home the previous night. The girl tapped staccato edicts into her controller, her eyes glued to the television screen where scantily clad alien girls shot purple lighting at a lizard astronaut.

Sandor raised his eyes to the ceiling and slumped into the kitchen to fetch a beer. He couldn't understand how a woman like Jeyne, who seemed more capable of handling adult responsibilities than most her age - including Sansa, if Sandor was being perfectly honest – could enjoy such a fucking childish activity.

"I'll be out of here in fifteen minutes," Jeyne said by way of greeting. "I just needed to get a little further in this level."

Sandor ambled back into the living room and glared at the murderous creatures on the screen. He breathed a sigh of relief that Sansa didn't like gaming any more than he did, and that Jeyne would be leaving for the night shift shortly.

"Sansa's in your room," Jeyne continued, thwacking the buttons furiously. "Argh!" she cried out as her reptilian space explorer burst into a thousand revoltingly-rendered bloody pieces. The brunette threw her controller onto the couch and yanked off her headphones in disgust. "She's kind of upset because she got a rejection from that dressmaker off Baelor Boulevard."

"Got it," Sandor responded. He took a swig of beer and let the liquid slide down his gullet. Another job rejection probably wasn't the only reason Sansa was upset, if she had been getting late notices for her unpaid bills. He headed toward the bedroom, expecting to interrupt Sansa in the middle of wiping tears away.

"But I think she and I figured something out that might work, at least for a little bit," Jeyne called over her shoulder. Sandor wondered what she meant.

He found Sansa sitting at her little desk that he had crammed into a corner on move-in day, gazing into a hand mirror and drawing thick black lines across her eyelids. She wore a familiar-looking black dress, and when she turned toward him she had a hopeful smile. "What do you think?" she asked, standing up. The skirt came up quite a bit higher on Sansa's long legs than it did on Jeyne's shorter ones.

Sandor gave Sansa a long look, feeling both confused and suddenly quite interested to know what color of panties she was wearing. "Jeyne's dress?" He asked, hoping absently that Sansa had on the pink ones with the little ribbons.

"It's her spare outfit for the casino. She set me up as a coat check girl for their evening shift," Sansa explained. She twirled around once. "Do you like it?"

 _I would like it better if the skirt was hiked up around your waist right now, with your legs wrapped around me,_ he thought before he had the chance to remind himself that he was supposed to be providing support for her effort to address her finances. He answered, "It looks good," and silently rued the fact that he would have to wait many hours before he would get to find out if he had guessed right about her undergarments. Still, he was glad that she had figured out something temporary employment-wise.

"You were right when we spoke earlier. I should start bringing in a paycheck, even if it isn't exactly through the career path I want to follow right now." She looked disappointed even as she was saying the words, but Sandor could only exhale with relief.

"Sometimes you have to take an unplanned detour to get where you need to go," he replied, pleased that Sansa had come to the conclusion by herself.

"Yes, I've found what I need in a lot of unexpected places lately," she agreed, smiling up at him.

Sandor's mouth twitched and he pulled Sansa into an embrace for a long deep kiss. She tasted like mouthwash and lip balm, and she squeaked a little as he pressed her body against his.

Sansa's phone vibrated on her desk and she broke away from Sandor to read the message on the screen. Her forehead creased and she shoved the device into her handbag. "Jeyne and I had better get going," she told him. "We won't be back until late, but try to stay awake for me, won't you?"

 _As if I could go to sleep now,_ he thought to himself as leaned down to kiss her again.

Sansa loved living with Sandor, really she did. He was kind and gentle with her, and he was as sweet as could be, in his own rough way. By day, he was gruffly chivalrous - he filled up the Mustang's gas tank without even asking her, and he made good on his promise to teach her more about cooking – and by night, he worshipped her body in a way that far surpassed her experiences with previous boyfriends. As recently as a few months ago, Sansa would never have imagined herself to be so pleased to be dating anyone, much less an older, coarse-tongued, fire-scarred man; now, she could hardly imagine that she had ever lived without him. Domestic life was providing a wonderful, unexpected bliss in her life.

As for Jeyne – well, things weren't perfect – the mess in the living room was appalling – but Sansa's friend had found other ways to make peace with Sandor, and Sansa truly appreciated the part-time job reference. Sansa still hoped that Jeyne would find another place to live soon, but the dark-haired girl was clearly doing what she could to show her gratitude for the roof over her head.

There was one thing that truly vexed Sansa, though. Petyr was still frequently sending her messages, trying to convince her to change her mind about helping him spy on Varys. _::You're smarter than the other girls, and I trust you. You and I could make a profitable partnership::_ , he sometimes texted her. Occasionally he taunted her about her unsuccessful job search, which Sansa was beginning to suspect that he was purposely hindering. : _:Sorry to hear you got rejected again. Don't forget about how much money you could make with me::_ he had sent the night she had started checking coats at the cardroom. Sansa had deleted the message, as usual, but later on when the rude patrons were snapping their fingers over her perceived slowness, she couldn't help but wonder if she had made a mistake refusing Petyr's offer.

It wasn't hard to feel that maybe she had chosen incorrectly at times like this, when she was perched on her chair in the bedroom, squinting through her glasses at one of her coworkers' dresses laid out on her lap. Sansa was adding some subtle beading to the garment; some of the girls had asked Sansa to do it for them after they had seen how Sansa had modified the uniforms that she and Jeyne wore. Sansa had begun the customization simply as an effort to keep her vow to never again wear anything ugly to work, but she had agreed to perform several such jobs after her coworkers had offered to pay her. _So this is what all my hard work in college amounts to,_ Sansa thought morosely, j _ust enough skill to add a little class to some skin-tight service uniforms._ She shouldn't have been feeling so bad, though. At least the casino had a loose dress code policy, requiring only that the girls wore something short and black. And this was helping her keep up her skills, wasn't it? At least, this is what she kept telling herself every time she reviewed her pitiful bank balance, which constantly reminded her that one part-time job plus occasional piece-work would never actually pay all her bills.

Sansa's phone vibrated on her desk. She hoped it was Sandor letting her know when he'd be home. She carefully laid the unfinished dress out on the bed, then picked up her phone and looked at the screen.

 _::I'm losing patience, Sansa::_ Petyr had sent. :: _Varys is staffing up for some secret new project, and I need someone skilled in his shop to help me learn more.::_

Sansa bit her lip hard in frustration. She set the phone back down, wishing that her former boss would just leave her alone and would stop tempting her with these poisoned offers, wishing that Sandor was at home to distract her, even as she wondered what kind of project Varys was undertaking. The bald man was the only bridal designer in town who was considered equal to Petyr, much to the latter's chagrin.

She received another message. _::If you don't respond by tomorrow, I regret to say that I'll have to find someone else to assist me. Someone who doesn't deserve it as much as you do:_ :

Sansa ground her teeth. _What other choice do I have?_ she thought hopelessly, opening a blank text to respond to her former boss. She typed half a dozen responses and deleted all of them without sending anything.

Just as Sansa finally felt as though she had composed something that she was ready to send, she heard the front door slam shut. Heavy footsteps lumbered down the hall, and a few moments later Sandor was leaning against the doorframe and giving her a smirk as he loosened his tie. "Now there's a nice image to come home to," he greeted her. "The little bird on her perch, wearing her glasses and all."

Sansa set her phone down again without sending the message. She would wait to respond to Petyr until she had the chance to talk to Sandor about her dilemma, at least in general terms. She had never told him about Petyr's offer, having always felt too ashamed over ever having considered the deceptive proposal in the first place. But he had certainly experienced his share of work problems from bad bosses, and he might have some useful advice for her.

Sandor approached her and leaned over to place a kiss on her forehead. "You hungry for dinner?" he asked as he rubbed her shoulders.

"Not really," Sansa replied, smiling up at him.

"Me neither," he agreed, and slipped his hand down to cup her breast.

As Sansa returned Sandor's kiss and he began pulling her shirt over her head, she decided that Petyr could wait.


	12. Chapter 12

Sansa awakened to a dark room with black furniture shapes smudged against indigo walls. It was evidently far enough into the morning that the buzzing mercury vapor lamp which illuminated the fire lane outside the bedroom window at night time had shut off, but it was still too early for the first dawn rays to peek over the building across the alleyway. Sansa blinked the grit out of her eyes and shifted her head in the direction of the bedside table to read her clock's digital display. It was not even six o'clock; even Sandor, who almost always got up before the sun rose to hit the gym before work, had at least another half-hour of sleep coming to him. For his part, he seemed to be making the most of his last bit of slumber and was snoring away, his every inhalation carrying with it the power and volume of a four-stroke engine. The romantic comedies that Sansa had so enjoyed during college had failed to depict this particular aspect of living with a man.

In fact, those movies got most things wrong. They always depicted a perfect man with a perfect career and a perfect home just waiting for a beautiful heroine to stumble into his world and make his life complete. Sandor certainly was not the kind of handsome gentleman who the movies portrayed or who Sansa had originally envisioned for herself; he had neither an exciting job nor a stylish home; his cheap apartment fixtures and stentorian snoring might have troubled Sansa when she was younger as being contradictory to her desired destiny, but now those things seemed like minor inconveniences when she weighed them against the overall pleasure of being with him. At least the films were right that Sansa could find true romance - they had simply misled her about the precise form it would take.

Of course, the movies also made another glaring error with regard to the heroine - they perpetually concluded with the female lead reaching total fulfillment in all areas of her life. Frankly, Sansa could have used a little bit more of that fantasy in her own personal reality. Between the texts from Petyr that she had left unanswered and her crummy minimum wage job, she wasn't feeling especially self-actualized at the moment.

Sansa reached over to the bedside table and picked up her phone. There were no new messages, but she felt distressingly aware that the clock was ticking per Petyr's edict. Her old boss was nothing if not precise. He would give her til midnight tonight, and not a single stroke past, to give him an answer.

Sansa sighed and shifted toward Sandor, who snorted and smacked his lips in his sleep. She had intended to discuss Petyr's overtures with her boyfriend last night, but between the post-work lovemaking and late dinner and warm comfortable pajamas and welcoming bed, she had never gotten around to bringing it up. If she were being totally honest with herself, she had to admit that she had been procrastinating about explaining for weeks and weeks now. It was embarrassing to mislead Sandor - he heaped such scorn on lying, and it pained her to think she would have to tell him about her dishonesty via omission - but she was so tired of scraping by, of relying on him and Jeyne to take care of her, and she desperately wanted to know his viewpoint on the questionable offer.

At the very least, Sansa owed it to Sandor to consider Petyr's proposal, if for no other reason than to put herself back on the road to financial independence. And maybe Sandor would understand; after all, he had once faced an exponentially more terrible job situation, and it had all eventually worked out for him.

Scooting over, Sansa hooked her leg over Sandor's and lay her arm across his broad chest. Now that summer was turning to fall and the nights were getting colder, he had begun wearing undershirts to bed, just as Sansa had switched out her light tank tops and lace-trimmed shorts for cozy long-sleeved shirts and knit leggings. It wasn't quite as sexy as sleeping bare between the sheets as they had done at the very beginning of their relationship, but there was a snug intimacy about it that she was coming to love. Also, she felt weird about sleeping naked with Jeyne out in the living room. And it wasn't as though Sandor couldn't easily slip his hands under the elastic waistband of her pajama pants if he wanted to, which he did frequently and with great relish. Sansa hoped that those pleasant parts of their relationship would help balance out the rather uncomfortable conversation she would need to initiate presently.

Sandor stirred beside her. He rubbed the eye on the scarred side of his face with the heel of his palm. "Hell, what time is it?" He rasped, his voice gravelly. He glanced at the clock as he shifted to put his arm under Sansa and pull her closer. "Why are you awake?"

Sansa pressed her cheek against his shoulder. In spite of her plans to explain Petyr's proposal, her tongue seemed to have become secured to the roof of her mouth with rubber cement. She exhaled and snuggled against Sandor, feeling uncertain and frustrated with herself.

Sandor cleared his throat and gently brushed his fingers against her ribs. "Something wrong?"

Sansa took a deep breath. She had to tell him. She extracted herself from his embrace and sat up in bed, then flicked on the little table lamp next to her. She blinked again, allowing her eyes to adjust to the light, and took in Sandor, his hair sticking out on one side of his head, his throat rough with two-days beard growth, his pupils trained on her nipples poking out beneath her shirt's thin fabric. "I have to tell you about a job offer I received."

"How can you possibly think this is a good idea?" Sandor growled, his voice smoking with sulfur and charcoal. His ears had rung as Sansa had described how her old boss had been texting her for weeks, how the man had probably been meddling with her other job interviews, and how he was trying to convince her to double-cross some other high-fashion freak, but Sandor had wanted to smash his fist through the drywall when she admitted that she was actually thinking about taking the slimeball up on the offer.

"I admit that it a drastic step, but I fear I've exhausted all other options in my career field," Sansa replied with a peep. She looked down into her lap and pulled her sleeves over her small clenched fists. The corners of her mouth were drawn downward in a kind of disappointed, embarrassed pout, as if she hadn't been expecting Sandor to react with such derision. "I can't just go work for Varys instead of Petyr, because I'm sure that Petyr would just ruin everything by telling Varys I'm spying on him anyway -"

What was with the names of these bridal empire idiots? Every time Sansa said "Varys" or "Petyr" Sandor mentally punched another hole through his wall. But even worse than their stupid fucking monikers on Sansa's tongue and the weasling corporate intrigues she was describing was that she was missing Sandor's point. It was ridiculous that she thought that she might be able to restart her career with some two-faced blackmailer. And, he hated to admit, he felt like he had been gutted with a jagged knife as he learned that she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him about her problem in the first place. He ground his teeth and narrowed his eyes, drawing on the reserves of patience he had developed working for Joffrey, and remained silent, not trusting himself to say anything.

Unfortunately, Sandor's grim, stony expression evidently spurred Sansa to attempt to further defend her possible course of action. As she tallied up all the reasons she believed that she might want to go spy for Petyr, Sandor mentally tabulated the many vile ways that Cersei and Joffrey had used him. The longer his list got, the angrier he felt that she would even consider taking the job, the more furious he became that she had lied to him, the more aggrieved he felt over her preference for a clearly stupid short-term decision over doing something smarter that would help her in the long run. Sandor recalled the years he had lost as an angry, pathetic alcoholic because of the way that his Baratheon Lannister bosses had taken advantage of his intimidating appearance, and he wanted to claw away the scars on his face as he imagined Sansa ending up as damaged as he had become.

But his building rage impeded him from expressing any of that. By the time Sansa wrapped up her explanation and looked at him like she expected him to award her points a school debate, all he could think about was driving his Bronco straight through the silk-infested display window of her ex-boss's bridal shop. Instead he jumped out of bed and shouted the first thing that came into his mind. "That guy is just a slimy piece of shit who wants to use you and throw you away when you're no longer helpful to him. Can't you see that?"

Sansa slipped out from under the sheets and stood up, her eyes cold. The bed separated them by no more than a couple yards, but it seemed to Sandor that she was suddenly leagues apart from him. "I'm not sure that's true," she replied, obviously struggling to keep her tone even. "Petyr is very successful and he helped me quite a lot, at least before he fired me -"

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You're thinking like an immature little girl," Sandor rasped in response, regretting it even as he heard himself say the words. Ashamed, he turned around and started rooting through the closet for his work clothes, as incapable of looking Sansa in the face as he was of apologizing for the cruel sentiment.

"Why must you be so hateful?" Sansa whispered, and Sandor didn't need to see her face to know that her eyes must have been clouding up with unfallen tears. But her words, even though they were colored with pain, reminded him of the way Cersei had once gleefully described him to her greedy investors.

"Hateful? Aye, that's just what I am," he agreed, the sentence souring his mouth. He yanked a white button-down off its hanger and shrugged it over his shoulders. "Maybe if you weren't so busy being perky and naive all the time, you would have noticed by now that I'm just a mean old dog."

For a moment all he heard was his own angry breathing and the sweep of his pants as he pulled them up over his legs, and he supposed that he had finally silenced her incessant peeping. But as he was tucking in his shirt he felt her fingers fluttering against his shoulder. He looked down in her direction and noticed her toes curled in the carpet. He still couldn't look her in the eye.

"If that is how you see yourself, I feel sorry for you," she said, running her hand down his bicep.

It was the furthest thing from what he wanted to hear. "Feel sorry for ime?!/i" He hissed as he whipped his arm away and glared down at Sansa. He wasn't sure if her touch or her words burnt him more. He recalled Nera's icy smirk, thought of the way she explained their one-night stand from so many years ago to her friends. iI only slept with him because I felt sorry for him and that hideous face./i It always came down to contempt, didn't it? "Save your pity for yourself. You're prepared to let some scheming snake destroy your career and your life, but you still think that I'm the one who deserves scorn." He gestured to his ruined face.

"You thought - you thought I was talking about your burns?" Sansa cried and stepped away from him, sounding as though he had personally punched her in the gut, and he was filled with remorse and self-loathing so intense that he could barely think straight. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. "That's not what I meant, and you know it. The scars - I don't care about -" she trailed off.

Sandor turned away from her again and ripped one of his too-short cheap black ties off the rack. He refused to look at her as he took his keys and wallet out of the top dresser drawer, but her words ricocheted around in his head and all he could think in response was ifuck, fuck, fuck/i as he stalked out of the bedroom.

Out of the corner of his eye he registered Jeyne sprawled out on the couch, yawning and appearing confused. The girl had probably heard everything. Sandor couldn't even summon the desire to growl at her to mind her own business as he grabbed his raincoat off the hook by the door.

He grasped the doorknob in his huge hand and hesitated, wondering if, just maybe, Sansa would follow him, call out to him to come back. If she did, he would embrace her if she would let him, remind her that he was just a burnt up piece of shit who didn't deserve her, throw himself at her mercy, let her say what she would of him.

She didn't follow. He opened the door and stepped out into the cold grey morning sunlight.

Strictly speaking, Sandor had been "working" for hours, but really he had just been slumping over his computer keyboard; he was nothing more than a hunk of crumpled up Sandor-shaped garbage crammed into the Hound's squealing office chair.

Many years ago, work at Kingsguard had become his respite from his personal turmoil; he could sit down at his desk and open his case files and lose himself in an almost meditative state of concentration. But today, every time he actually tried to accomplish something, he just made stupid rookie mistakes that reminded him of his screw-up at home, of Sansa's disappointed expression after he had yelled at her. She hadn't even been crying properly when he had left; she had just stared at him like he'd finally done what she expected of him, that he had finally let out the disgusting animal that she had always known was living inside of him. Around four o'clock Sandor decided that he would just sit tight until quitting time in order to avoid any additional embarrassing fuck-ups.

The plan would have worked if his grizzled, balding supervisor didn't find it necessary to interrupt him. "Clegane," he greeted gently, as he always did. Sandor found the kind tone even more annoying than usual.

"Meribald," Sandor muttered, moving his hand to his mouse in a shadow of an effort to pretend like he cared enough to make the holier-than-thou old man think that he had actually been working.

Meribald stepped fully into the cubicle uninvited, as he always did, and he sat in the grimy linoleum seat across from Sandor's desk, clutching a manila envelope against his polyester-clad stomach. "You have been working on the Arryn file," he said, his voice unusually neutral. "You remember your most recent interaction with the client?"

Sandor groaned. How could he forget? The woman had nearly chiseled a hole through his eardrum with her threats of a lawsuit. Sandor had thought that he had managed to convince her not to do something stupid, but if Meribald was here to talk to him about it, evidently he had failed. Meribald was probably here to let him know in hearty, "attaboy" language that he was being put on some awful corrective course of action. Or maybe the supervisor would just fire him. Neither would surprise him, not on this black day when his life with Sansa was hanging so precariously on the cruel words from this morning. Maybe she was already finding a new place to stay and was moving her things out of the apartment, the very thought of which made his stomach twist like a wet washrag. Maybe he had always been as much of a screw-up at work as he was in his personal life, and Meribald was here to delineate all of Sandor's failures with a cheery smile.

In any case, Sandor didn't know what to say that wouldn't make his situation even worse, so he just nodded in agreement.

Meribald set a single piece of paper on the desk. Sandor glanced down at it suspiciously; it was just the Arryn case form summary. "I'm not sure what you did, but somehow you finally got rid of the old bag." He smiled as if they were sharing a private joke. "You'll excuse me if I use such unforgiving language to describe a client, but truly she was a nightmare. In any case, you convinced her to drop us as an insurer. She's been threatening lawsuits against us for years so we've always had to treat her carefully." He pointed to the bottom line of the form, which indicated that the policy had been cancelled at the request of the client. "Apparently she finally decided that she'd never get a cent out of us, and she's gone for good!"

Sandor looked back and forth between the form and Meribald's clear twinkling eyes. "She's not suing us?" he asked, feeling slow and confused.

Meribald leaned back in his seat and broke out into a pleased grin, revealing a bottom row of crooked teeth. "Just the opposite! And it's all thanks to you!" The man handed Sandor the manila envelope. "Best of all, I'm finally authorized to give you the promotion you've been asking about since you got back from the conference. You'll find all the authorizing paperwork in there. It comes with a nice bump in pay, you know."

Sandor still couldn't quite process that he was receiving exactly what he'd hoped for on a piss-filled day like today. Under the circumstances, it didn't feel like the triumph he had been anticipating. He fiddled with the brass brad and pulled out the forms and pretended to start looking through them.

"Well done, Clegane," Meribald commended him with irritating sincerity. "Keep it up and you'll be overseeing the whole claims division before you know it." He gave Sandor yet another smile, and his eyes lingered as they always did on the burnt side of Sandor's face before he finally stood and stepped out of the cubicle.

Sandor clenched his teeth until his temples began to ache and stared at the papers in front of him without reading the congratulatory message printed on them. _After all this time, after all the things I tried to change, the only thing I ever get rewarded for is intimidating people,_ he thought hopelessly. He pushed the papers aside.

When the unbearably long workday finally ended, Sandor sagged in the driver's seat of the Bronco and fired up the engine. Much as he wanted to see Sansa, he just couldn't bring himself to go home yet. Sansa was probably calling up her old boss right now, or in the middle of getting ready to go work at the cardroom, or worse - he hardly dared to think about it - packing up to move out, and he wasn't ready to see her doing any of those things now.

He made it to the intersection where the Keep was located, and his mouth watered for a big stiff drink. But as he passed what had once been his own personal pit for drowning his self-hatred, he saw beyond the strip mall's faded stucco and the parking lot's cracked asphalt and instead remembered the numerous Happy Hours that he and Sansa had enjoyed there recently. He couldn't even go back there - the bartender would probably ask why Sansa wasn't with him. He kept driving, and soon found himself headed in a familiar but long-avoided direction.

By the time he made it to the downtown financial corridor, rush hour was over and the last ray of sun had set behind the numerous skyscrapers. Sandor found himself parked in the loading zone out front of a highrise that he hadn't even set his eyes on in years. The neon yellow lettering proclaiming the firm's name, Baratheon Lannister, had been pulled down long ago; in its place was the massive, recently redesigned black and red logo for Targaryen Life Insurance, a ruthlessly progressive conglomerate that had bought up most of BL's holdings after Joffrey had been thrown in prison.

Sandor parked the Bronco in a loading zone and stumbled out of his car, adjusting the lapel of his raincoat as the cold breeze picked up. The wide sidewalk, which bustled with suited-up workers during the day, was now entirely devoid of people except for a homeless man in a bulky black jacket pushing a shopping cart on the opposite side of the street. Sandor stared up at the huge empty building. He tried to find his old office window, but he realized that he couldn't even remember what floor he used to work on.

 _This is pathetic, even for you,_ a molten gold voice hissed through his brain.

Sandor sighed, his breath coming out in a great steaming mist. It was almost a relief to hear Cersei's acid voice sizzling in his mind again. He suddenly understood that he had been uneasy all day, had been constantly half-listening for her soft evil tone after his undeserved months of freedom from her cruel words. He had been stupid enough to think that maybe she would never come back. Now that she was here, it just as painful as he would have expected, but it also felt familiar, as though the strange twists that his life path had taken after he had met Sansa were finally straightening back out into the lonely, empty road that he was destined to follow.

The wind picked up and brushed against Sandor's coat. It was as if Cersei's ghost had just passed by him, and he shivered. He could almost smell her camphorous perfume and metallic hairspray wafting on the cold night air, hear the slow predatory click of her expensive heels on the sidewalk. _You didn't really fool yourself into thinking I was gone, did you?_

Sandor didn't answer her. He looked up at the mostly dark building again. Many floors up, a light flicked on - undoubtedly some janitor was vacuuming up there. Sandor squinted as he focused on the lone illuminated window; he did another quick count from the first floor and remembered that it was his own old office.

Sandor recalled that last day when the company had been declared insolvent by the Board, just hours after Joffrey had been led away by the authorities, kicking and cursing and spitting and screaming all the way to the elevator. Sandor had turned off the overhead fluorescents and had started pouring himself shots from the bottle he kept in his desk drawer, and he had become so drunk that he had thrown up in the trash can twice. Eventually, long after the sun had gone down, he had risen from the couch in his office and staggered to the window and looked down at the street below, and he had wondered what his life would look like now that he had been released from serving Joffrey and Cersei. As he had gazed down, he had seen little more than darkness, and he had thought that the image was about right for his future - darkness was all he deserved after the way he had conducted himself as a BL employee. He had no idea how right his former self would be.

The light flicked off again. Cersei's laughter curled around in his mind like whorls of smoke from the menthols she used to light up whenever she closed a profitable deal. _Fear and disgust is all you'll ever deserve, and it's all you'll ever get from anyone. It's ridiculous you thought you'd get something different from the girl._

Sandor still didn't reply. He thought about the way Sansa's cheeks flushed when he kissed her, and the way she would take his hand and lead him to the bedroom, and the way her voice would lilt upward when she was telling him about her family, and the surprised pain - not fear, not disgust - in her eyes when he had shouted at her this morning. _The scars - I don't care about -_ she had whispered as he had stalked past her. She didn't care about the scars, but she did care about him.

"You're wrong," Sandor said aloud to the empty building, to Cersei, to his former and present self _. Fear and disgust is all that anyone ever felt about_ you, _you viper bitch. But Sansa cares about_ me. Or at least she had, until this morning. And her certainly still cared for her.

There was a squawk, a fingernail scratch on vinyl, and then silence. Sandor clenched his teeth and waited for Cersei's retort, but all he heard was the breeze whipping around the edifice in front of him, the air brake of a city bus stopping on the street behind breeze picked up again, and now all that Sandor smelled was damp concrete.

He yanked his keys out of his pocket and stepped back to the Bronco. He had to get back to Sansa before it was too late.

Sansa waited for Sandor at the apartment until the very last minute that she could, but finally she had to leave to get to the cardroom on time. She had just been so sure that he would burst through the door, all apologies and sorrowful embraces for his abominable behavior. After all, it was what he should have done - it was certainly what any girlfriend would have deserved and expected - after the things he had said. But he never showed up.

She finally threw on her beaded black dress and ran as fast as her heels would allow to the Mustang and rather carelessly broke the speed limit in order to make it to work on time. Every time she pressed her foot to the gas pedal, she felt like sobbing as she thought the way that Sandor's help in acquiring the sports car had brought them together. Then she would flush with anger once again over his nasty words.

After she parked her car in the employee lot and as she unpacked a half-dozen newly-completed customized vests from the trunk for the blackjack dealers, she thought more about her fight with Sandor. He had been so mean, with his glaring and growling and trying to intimidate her like when they had first met. The worst part, though, was that he hadn't been completely wrong, though the deplorable way he had delivered his message had made it sting all the more. She _had_ been waffling about her job. She hadn't trusted him to tell Sandor about Petyr, who really was trying to push her around, just like Sandor said. She probably _was_ acting a bit immaturely as well, though Sandor might have provided some solutions instead of just yelling at her. The fact that she still hadn't given Petyr an answer one way or another only seemed to offer more proof to the truth in Sandor's blunt words.

Sansa walked through the back door and into the employee locker area and distributed the vests to their owners, picking up cash and checks for her service. She stepped out onto the darkened main floor and navigated her way through the poker and baccarat tables and noticed Jeyne on the other side of the room, busily serving drinks to a group of loud craps players. Finally, she made it to the lobby area, and she let herself in to the narrow coat check room.

As she sat down on the stool and started counting out the hanger tags, she sighed heavily. This wasn't how things were supposed to go with her life. She had done everything right in school, had gotten a good job afterwards, had found herself a wonderful man. She was supposed to be a rising star in the bridal fashion industry, bringing in a nice paycheck and maybe even looking forward to her own engagement on the horizon. She was not supposed to have been fired from her dream job, sitting on a stool in a dark coat closet earning minimum wage and lousy tips, wondering if she even had a relationship to come home to.

An attractive couple approached her half-door, giving one another longing, loving looks. The olive-skinned man helped his striking raven-haired date remove her fringed red and yellow wrap from around her shoulders and let his eyes linger inappropriately on the cleavage that she exposed. Sansa averted her eyes, not wishing to be drawn into the couple's clearly private non-verbal exchange. The man then shrugged off his own buttery leather jacket and handed both garments to Sansa with a wink. The woman gave Sansa a smile that seemed a little too predatory to be friendly, and the man stuffed some extra bills into the tip jar before wrapping his arm around the woman's waist and steering her toward the gambling area with a throaty laugh. Sansa rolled her eyes and automatically wondered what Sandor would say about the two of them before remembering that she had more important things to worry about when it came to her boyfriend. She slipped off the stool and went to the rack to hang up the coats.

When she turned around, there was a new customer at her window. With a turquoise silk cravat at his throat, a bespoke collared shirt in a black and burgundy paisley pattern, and a smoking jacket constructed of cabernet-colored silk and and black velvet, he was rather overdressed for the cardroom. His round face was shaven clean, as was the dome of his head, and his eyes were bright as they flicked around to examine Sansa and her attire. "My dear Sansa Stark. I've been waiting for you to give me a call, but you have failed to do so." His voice was silver-plated steel. "So I came to you."

"And you are?" Sansa asked, raising an eyebrow and wondering if she should call for the bouncer standing outside the front door.

The man gave her a closed-lipped smile and reached into an inner pocket within his jacket. He produced a slim enameled cardholder and flicked it open, then thumbed out one of the cards and handed it to Sansa.

She looked down at the embossed black lettering on the thick cream-colored paper. She wasn't as surprised as she probably should have been when she read:

 _Varys Couture_

 _Custom Fashions for Formal Events_

"I believe we have some business together," Varys said, and he handed her his smoking jacket.


End file.
